Decentralization as Organizing Principle of Emergent Urban Structures

Abstract

With a view to the ongoing Bologna project (www.arXiv.org/pdf/nlin.AO/0109025) general organizing principles of emergent structures in social systems are being discussed with a view to the meaning of decentralization. It is proposed to introduce decentralization as a principle for organizing emergent structures in a generic way utilizing aspects of the insight gained by the Santa Fe school dealing with self-organized criticality. The techniques utilized come from graph theory, category theory, and in particular quantum gravity, which bear a strong potential for a multitude of applications in research fields with a significant interdisciplinary scope. This is especially important for applications in the organization of social systems which usually call for an interaction of logic and hermeneutic.