Exploring the future with complexity science: The emerging models

Complexity science and theory development for the futures field

“…Urban systems have evolved from a continental urban hierarchy into an intercontinental urban network in which the linkages are as important as the nodes. The future evolution of the urban system has been explored during the next two centuries [1], in which it is important to take a time horizon that extends beyond the ascending phase of the population curve, since the use of resources is linked to the ultimate size of the urban system.…”

“…He has also pointed out that any theory on the size distribution of cities will need to explain the empirical law, referred to as Zipf's rank-size rule, which fits best for countries with a federal structure such as the USA. However the most likely trajectory for the world urban system to maintain a stable configuration will be towards equipollence (equal power) with the same population at each of fifteen levels in the urban hierarchy [1], since it limits the asymmetry of the urban system. As soon as spatial structure is put into economic theory the notion of general equilibrium becomes invalid, so it no longer remains economics and another term such as 'Ecodynamics' would need to be used instead.…”

“…Complexity science applications have been outlined for each of the futurist schools [1], and these provide evolving theories for futures thinking. Environmental and geosciences treat the earth and its various components as typical out-ofequilibrium systems with dissipative processes.…”

“…This article is the final part of a trilogy of papers in Futures and is preceded by 'Exploring the future with complexity science: the emerging models' [1] and 'Futurists and their schools: a response to Ziauddin Sardar's 'the namesake'' [2]. The 'futures field' can be divided into five major segments, or futurist schools that are subsumed under the terms 'futures research', 'futures studies' and 'foresight' as follows:…”

“…The complexity science models [1] that have been developed for each of the segments of the futures field, contribute to a theory of futures research that is relevant within each of the schools. It has been explained that futures research has a Complexity science unifies some forty diverse features that arise from the evolution of the civil system and these underlie theory development in the futures field.…”