Development is usually measured and governed at the level of nations — but the evidence tells a different story, in which cities are the fundamental unit.  This inversion redefines development as a tangible process of physical, social and economic connectivity, leading to interesting new solutions. 

It is a central dogma of international policy that nations are the principal units of development. However, empirical support for this view is weak, and national-level commitments are faltering — driven by deep internal divisions that expose the limitations of top-down frameworks. Within any nation, development varies enormously across scales: regions, cities, and neighbourhoods each face distinct constraints and priorities and often move at different speeds.

In this talk, Professor Bettencourt will show that cities and urban systems are the natural environments creating development. In this context, normative ideas of development acquire a new and more precise meaning, as the tangible expansion of physical, social, and economic connectivity and interdependence. He will show that this framework explains empirical patterns across time and diverse geographies and accounts for simultaneous changes across many distinct metrics, reconciling heterogeneity at the largest scale (nations) and the smallest (neighbourhoods) within a single coherent picture.

This view contrasts sharply with prevailing approaches to sustainable development. Rather than top-down national targets, which suffer from ecological fallacies and distributional effects, it emphasises the articulation of bottom-up processes across scales including communities of innovation, physical connectivity, and the basic services that support human development.

Luís M. A. Bettencourt is a Professor of Ecology and Evolution and the College at the University of Chicago. He is also Associate Faculty of the Department of Sociology and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

His research focuses on the theory and modeling of complex systems and the processes that underlie the structure and growth of cities, in particular. He connects interdisciplinary concepts and advanced mathematics with new technologies and data to create new systems’ theory and methods. This work also involves collaborations with governments, NGOs, and interdisciplinary researchers worldwide to co-produce new insights and transformative practices for sustainable development.

'Cities all the way down: a new geographical framework for development' with Prof Luís Bettencourt