Computational Approaches for Urban Environments: An Editorial - Computational Approaches for Urban Environments - page 7

universal structure of cities and the cultural, technological, and economical factors
shaping human dynamics. Clustering identifies locations with similar patterns. Their
findings confirm that while the economy becomes more global, common patterns
emerge in business areas of different cities across the globe.
The final chapter by Paul Longley reflects about the potential of computational
approaches discussed in this topic, observes current development trends, and frames
future research challenges. To sum up, the chapters introduced above tackle a variety
of aspects of cities by means of innovative computational approaches. The collection
of chapters indicates that cities are far too complex to deal with them from only one
point of view and one set of argumentations. In addition, it is important to learn that
different methodological and theoretical approaches enrich and complement each
other. In this regard, it is desirable that the scientific outcome of this topic will stim-
ulate urban-related international and interdisciplinary research networks, paving the
way to bring us closer to Michael Batty's ( 2013 ) vision of a “new science of cities.”
Last but not least, the editors must express their gratefulness and gratitude to all
reviewers for their support and their critical and constructive comments for each
chapter. This has added significantly to the quality of the entire volume. We deeply
appreciate the efforts of all authors, who submitted a full chapter manuscript and
selected our topic as a potential publication outlet for their research. Furthermore,
we thank Mei-Po Kwan and Paul Longley for their comments. Marco Helbich
and Jamal Jokar Arsanjani thank the Alexander von Humboldt foundation and
Heidelberg University, Germany, for laying the foundation for this topic. Finally,
we acknowledge the Springer team as well as the series editors Jay D. Gatrell and
Ryan R. Jensen for their great assistance throughout the whole publication process.
Without all these helping hands, this volume would have never been published.
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