Cities as information

Abstract

From physics to social sciences, information today is seen as a fundamental aspect of reality. However, one form of information still seems underestimated, perhaps precisely because it is so present. We do not fully understand how cities materialize information, and how our minds deal with this environmental information to learn about the world, make decisions, and participate in the complex system of social interactions. This paper addresses three issues that need to be addressed if we are to understand the role of environmental information: (1) the physical problem: how can we preserve information in the built environment? (2) the semantic problem: how can physical form convey meaning? (3) The pragmatic problem: How do we use environmental information in our daily lives? Looking for answers, we introduced a three-layered model of information in cities, namely: environmental information in physical space, environmental information in semantic space and practical information exchanged by agents. We propose ways to estimate information in these different layers and apply these measures in simulated scenarios and in emblematic cities in different regions of the world. Our results suggest that spatial structures and land use patterns encode information and that aspects of physical and semantic information affect coordination in interaction systems.