Integrating Computational and Participatory Simulations for Design in Complex Systems

The understanding and conceptualization of cities and its constituent systems such as transportation and healthcare as open and complex is shifting the debates around the technical and communicative rationales of planning. Viewing cities in a holistic manner, as being organized at multiple scales and by multiple actors presents methodological challenges, one where our understanding of dynamism is applied in a tangible fashion to planning processes. Bridging the two rationales in the tools and methodologies of planning is necessary for the emergence of a “non-linear rationality” of planning, a theory that can account for complexity and one that is premised upon the complexity sciences. Simulations representing complex systems serves to provide evidence and support for planning, and has the potential to serve as an interface between the more abstract and political decision making and the material city systems. Increasingly criticized for being reductionist and not addressing complex systems in a holistic manner, the role that simulations have to play in an increasingly complex world needs to be reimagined and investigated. Moving beyond traditional and current planning methods, this thesis explores the role of simulations, participatory and computational in planning. Recognizing the need for holistic representations of systems in planning, the thesis integrates multiple disparate simulations into a holistic whole, achieving complex representations of a complex systems. These representations are then applied in an interactive environment to address planning problems in different contexts, and studied within their context of use. The thesis makes the following contributions: (i) an approach towards the development of complex representations of systems through distribution and integration, (ii) improvements on participatory methods to integrate computational simulations, (iii) through the different experiments of applying participatory and computational simulations in planning, a nuanced understanding of the relative value of the various constructs of simulations, (iv) technologies and frameworks that facilitate the easy development of integrated simulations that can support participatory planning processes. The thesis develops contributions through experiments, all of which involved planning problems and stakeholders from real world systems. The approach towards development of integrated simulations is realized in an open source framework, that has been applied in several experiments and is now in use in various labs and companies across the world. The framework creates computationally efficient, scalable and interactive simulations of complex large scale systems, which used in a participatory and exploratory manner delivers tangible plans and designs.