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A City Is a Complex Network

A city is not a tree but a semi-lattice. To use a perhaps more familiar term, a city is a complex network. The complex network constitutes a unique topological perspective on cities and enables us to better understand the kind of problem a city is. The topological perspective differentiates it from the perspectives of Euclidean geometry and Gaussian statistics that deal with essentially regular shapes and more or less similar things. Many urban theories, such as the Central Place Theory, Zipf's Law, the Image of the City, and the Theory of Centers can be interpreted from the point of view of complex networks. A livable city consists of far more small things than large ones, and their shapes tend to be irregular and rough. This chapter illustrates the complex network view and argues that we must abandon the kind of thinking (mis-)guided by Euclidean geometry and Gaussian statistics, and instead adopt fractal geometry, power-law statistics, and Alexander's living geometry to develop sustainable cities. Keywords: Scaling, living structure, theory of centers, objective beauty, head/tail breaks