Page 18 - Are You Future Ready?

analytics and go straight to pattern recognition? A
complicated structural equation model, or hybrid utility-

maximisation-discrete-choice-agent-based-model or a
general equilibrium model may dig down towards a 1:1
model of the dimensions of human spatial calculus, for

example in making home-buying or shopping-destination
choices. But do they produce more insights than observing
millions of cases of actual locational or route-choice
behaviour? Should the later be used to calibrate the
former? Or the former used to explain the latter?

016
The future of the urban digital twin is not quite with us but
it almost is. It is not just new skills that are required; real-

time urban data streams and massive systems of linked
records registered to multiple geographies right down to
the individual all force us to re-invent urban science.

Professor Chris Webster
Dean of Architecture
Chair Professor in Urban Planning and Development
Economics
The University of Hong Kong
April 2019