Several scholars recently called for pursuing urban science:

William Solecki compares the current study of cities to natural history in the 19th century. Back then most natural scientists were content to explore and document the extent of biological and behavioral differences in the world. Only recently has science moved from cataloguing life to understanding the genetic code that forms its very basis.

It’s time for urban studies to evolve the same way, says Solecki, a geographer at Hunter College who’s also director of the C.U.N.Y. Institute for Sustainable Cities. Scholars from any number of disciplines — economics and history to ecology and psychology — have explored and documented various aspects of city life through their own unique lenses. What’s needed now, Solecki contends, is a new science of urbanization that looks beyond the surface of cities to the fundamental laws that form their very basis too…

In Environment, the researchers outline three basic research goals for their proposed science of urbanization:

1. To define the basic components of urbanization across time, space, and place.
2. To identify the universal laws of city-building, presenting urbanization as a natural system.
3. To link this new system of urbanization with other fundamental processes that occur in the world.

The result, Solecki believes, will be a stronger understanding of the “DNA” of cities — and, by extension, an improved ability to address urban problems in a systemic manner. Right now, for instance, urban transport scholars respond to the problem of sprawl and congestion with ideas like bike lanes or bus-rapid transit lines. Those programs can be great for cities, but in a way they fix a symptom of a problem that still lingers. An improved science of urbanization would isolate the underlying processes that caused this unsustainable development in the first place.

Three quick thoughts:

1. I think this assumes we have the kind of data and methodology that could get at the “DNA of cities.” Presumably, this is big data collected in innovative ways. To use the natural science metaphor, it is one thing to know about the existence of DNA and it is another thing to collect and analyze it. With this new kind of data, cities can then be viewed as complex systems with lots of moving pieces.

2. Are there necessarily universal laws underlying cities? We are currently in an academic world where there are a variety of theories about urban growth but they tend to be idiosyncratic to particular cities, apply to particular time periods, and emphasize different aspects of social, economic, and political life. Is this because no one has really put it all together yet or because it is really hard to find universal laws?

3.