Translating cities: the use of digital technologies in urban environments

Computer models and information systems have been used for urban planning and design since the 1950s. Their capacity for analysis and problem-solving has increased substantially since then with hardware and software being able to manage large amounts of data. The beginning of the 2000s brought better technologies for data visualisation and intuitive software products and nowadays they are being used to design and manipulate highly complex urban systems. However, ontological and epistemological questions remain about the nature of urban environments. What do we know about cities and what is a city exactly? What theoretical models can be applied to the study of cities? How do we translate a city into data? What type of information really matters and what do we want to communicate with them? What are the implications of computer modelling for urban planning and design? This paper reviews how digital technologies have been used to shape our understanding of cities – implicating the development of urban theories – and how they impact the design and planning of cities. The point of depart is a scrutiny of the emergence of modern planning in the nineteenth century when cities became a ‘scientific subject’. A range of theories and concepts of the urban form and urban growth developed during the twentieth century will be presented and then linked to the first investigations involving the use of the computer for modelling and planning. The paper concludes with some discussions around the interaction of computing and urban theories.