Of brains and cities; neuroscience and cultures of decision-making
How neuroscientists understand our brains, and how we understand our cities; parallels, leaky metaphors and steady states.
A chilly December night in 2011. I had been invited to take part in an evening event called the North House Salon, one of a series of salons organised by Dr Sarah Caddick, neuroscience advisor to Lord David Sainsbury (ex-Minister for Science and Innovation in the UK government) and the Gatsby Foundation, bringing together various “expert groups” with select groups of neuroscientists. It was an absolute privilege to share a conversation with some of the UK’s leading scientists. It’s always fascinating to see another discipline at work, and we were also fortunate that they were all great communicators as well as great researchers.
This particular event was a collaboration with one of my old bosses at Arup, Dr Chris Luebkeman, Director of Arup’s Global Foresight, and it concerned the potential correlations between our emerging understanding of the brain, and our understanding of cities. (Perhaps we should also say our emerging understanding of cities?) The event was dubbed The Urban Nervous System.
As Chris put it in his intro, we do have an increasingly shared vocabulary and way of…
