The first industrial revolution which began in England in the mid-18th century set the modern world on a path of continually coalescing revolutions in technology that have now merged into one another. The world that we now confront is one where new information technologies are producing an environment of continual disruption. Some such as Kurzweil, and to an extent Harari argue that we are rapidly approaching a singularity (or singularities) beyond which we are unable to predict the future using representations and theories from the past. Others suggest that it is not information technology that will dominate the future but dramatically different environment and demographic regimes that provide grand challenges very different from the past. Whatever this future turns out to be, the way we study cities will radically change. The theories developed throughout the 20th century which focussed on how cities were ordered and structured with respect to one another now seem like relics from the past, where the constraints on how and why we move, why and where we locate, and what and how we build are now under increasing scrutiny. In short, what theories we have are no longer fit for purpose. In this talk, I will begin by examining city size and order, focussing on how cities have traditionally been associated with Empires and the industrial revolutions have more or less led to the end of Empire in a global age where everybody will be living in cities by the end of this century (Batty, 2011). In such a world the notion of where a city begins and ends physically is no longer relevant. City size distributions become arbitrary and physical interaction patterns no longer have much meaning when most of our interactions have become ethereal. I will largely speculate on this matters, hazarding a guess at how we might study cities when they are all part of a relatively seamless whole, a situation that is almost upon us and will be the dominant condition by the year 2100. 

​

​

​

Batty, M. (2011) Commentary: When all the World's a City, Environment and Planning A 43(4) 765–772