Dynamics and evolution of urban patterns: the evidence of the Mobile Landscape project

This research is focussed on cities and it develops innovative approaches for urban studies. In particular, the novelty comes from the theories of evolutionary physics and biosystems sciences applied to urban systems; the expected issue is concerned with the definition of an interdisciplinary theoretical viewpoint. A new method for monitoring urban mobility, named Mobile Landscapes, is finally shown as evidence of the complex behaviour of cities. This project uses location data from cell phones in order to study locations and intensities of urban activities and also to analyse people densities and their movements through urban regions. Briefly, the Mobile Landscapes project focuses on cities and aims to investigate their dynamics. Therefore, enhancing the importance of dissipative self-adaptive behaviours of cities, the outcomes, in the form of maps of urban activity, can also reveal how a city organises itself as a living organism. Focusing on flows and dynamic patterns generated by people and goods mobility, this project can also be a valuable method to highlight the role of time and to direct the practices of urban management and planning by way of an evolutionary approach. The case study described in this paper uses data on the activities of cell phone antennae in the metropolitan area of Milan, Italy.