21st Century Space & Movement
Logistics, Movement, Routing, Graph Theory
- Graph Theory
- Routing & Logistics
- Movement & Wayfinding
- Representing Space
Graph Theory
Graphs are made up of nodes and edges representing a network. Nodes being destination points, and edges being connections or bridges to get there.
Should we think about the graphs of today’s cities as different from what Euler described? Are there digital bridges or “edges” we should consider in graphs of physical networks? Nodes?
Why should we care about graphs? They help simplify complex problems and simulate many possible solutions quickly without taking into account too many factors.
The above project looks at networks in a hospital based on the trips that must be taken in the building interior by doctors and patients.
For more on graph theory, check out “A Gentle Introduction To Graph Theory”. Also Graph Commons!
Routing & Logistics
Routing is the process for selecting a path for traffic across a network. This is important because you may want to avoid certain areas, or you may try and prioritize a shortest path. Dykstra’s shortest path algorithm is a common methods for choosing a route based on what is the the shortest path.
Graph theory applies broadly to many networks (roads, social connections, sending information over the internet). For this reason many algorithms developed for routing can be applied to very different types of network problems.
How does digital traffic i.e. Yelp sends everyone to the same place, impact a network and its routing?
Today routing is particularly important for logistics problems where resources are more easily shared between nodes because the ubiquity of information about where resources. Orders from amazon are batched and dispatched along certain routes. The “last mile” delivery problem is a often referred to in supply chain management to talk about the often most difficult last leg of a path to deliver goods or services. This last leg of the trip occurs after goods arrive in dispatch centers in urban centers and then packages must be sorted and delivered to their individual addresses.
What are other routing problems designers should consider today?
What is a “Good” Path?
Routing and graphs aren’t only useful in thinking through e-commerce logistics problems, they can also be used to think through the experience of a city. While one service may care about the shortest path, a city planner may care about residents walking distance to nearby parks when laying out city geometries.
Some former students used Dykstra’s shortest path algorithm with some of their own rules for defining the “good” routes taking into account the likelihood of passing by activity or nature.
This considers walking paths avoiding zones that are congested.
Leah Meisterlin in Cartographies of Distance during “The Ways of Knowing Cities” conference at Columbia GSAPP 2018 looks at the constraints of individual travelers based on factors of gender and income. Aspects such as gender and income may limit the time individuals have to travel and thus impact the distances they can travel. She argues for this reason, individuals see different cities, and to many groups, that city may be much smaller.
Movement & Wayfinding
How has the internet changes what we can find or see in a city?
