Rugosity and concentricity: In urban planning, look to edges, not just the core

Date:

April 26, 2018

Source:

University of California - Davis

Summary:

Planners should view high rugosity (highly non-concentric) urban areas as symptomatic of vigor in urban and agricultural markets. Greater planning efforts are required to coordinated the co-joined health of both agricultural and urban land-uses. Empirical analysis is supported by land-use policies from 30 case study counties.

Traditional urban planning favors 'concentric' layouts with a downtown core surrounded by suburbs and farmland (right). But Catherine Brinkley argues instead that cities should plan for 'rugosity' (left) with more interfaces between functions.

Credit: UC Davis

Catherine Brinkley is a professor of human and community development and human ecology at UC Davis. So it's interesting that in a recent published paper, she advocates that cities should work more like coral reefs -- supporting a diversity of niches and uses for sustained vigor and resilience. In ecology and medical sciences, the term for a physical form with such topographic complexity is rugosity.