Urban Development and Urban Complexity

In this chapter, we will first outline the context that is at the heart of this book: urban development and its complexity. Urban development warrants explanation because, on the one hand, it is generally referred to in rather superficial and abbreviated terms. On the other hand, its specialist and technical connotations suggest very different fields of action. We first address the more obvious features of urban development (Sect. 2.1). We proceed with a deeper analysis of the thesis that cities are highly complex entities, and we explain what is meant by complexity in the context of urban and municipal developments. Finally, we elaborate on the currently established forms for dealing with urban complexity (Sect. 2.2).