Using Math To Design Cities And Supercomputers

caek writes "If you've played Sim City you've wrestled with one of the problems faced by supercomputer designers. Unfortunately there's no GameFAQs.com for the technical staff at Japan's Earth Simulator or Srinidhi Varadarajan and colleagues at Virginia Tech. True enough, they won't have to deal with rising crime or Godzilla but, as hinted at in a recent paper in Journal of Physics A, the physical layout of a massively parallel supercomputer is fundamentally the same problem as minimizing the time commuters spent stuck in traffic jams. Read the rest of my kuro5hin article for a popular explanation."

Comments

The Important thing is Rail

[AmericanInKiev]

Cities should layout their High Speed Bus (er Train) routes early

This will provide the contract builders need to build high density housing along high speed corridors - rather than randomly.

The key to getting commuters out of traffic - is only in part - optimizing their route.

The real key is getting them out of their damn cars.

(Electric Bicycle commuter speaking)

AIK

Re:Chicken-and-egg problem! ;-)

[AmericanInKiev]

So the question then is - how do you layout a city such that 10 million computer experts can all get to one place and design a super computer capable of calculating the design of such a city.

Idea: remove the vehicle subsidy - which is killing trains, buses, and bicycles.

Then you get mass transit.

In the end - the real barrior to optimizing streets will be the arab oil cartells screaming about the loss of oil revenues to keep those compluters stuck in traffic burning up time, space, and O2.

AIK

Re:We need to fix the ones we have somehow.

[merdark]

2. After they come back - they can vote on a central carfree zone in their city.

I don't know about a totally car free zone, trucks still need to be able to make deliveries for instance. But we definatly need more walking streets like in Europe. Driving downtown in most cities is futile anyways, and walking streets add so much character and class to a city. :)

The city should lay down some serious linear transit routes - in order to encourage as much brownfield redevelopment, and density conversions as possible.


Yes, more trains/subways are needed.

Low density neighborhoods in the line of High Density Trasit should be scheduled for redesign "with all deliberate haste".


This wouldn't fly I don't think. You can't just kick people out of their houses, as convenient as that may be.

We should allocate natural beauty for High Density Housing - rather than the other - which is to reward ineffecient design with luxurious vistas.

This is not as simple as you make it out. For instance, here in Toronto we have 'nice' neighbourhoods. Those neighbourhoods are nice precisly *because* they have no high desnsity housing. Low density housing areas can have lots of nice trees and be located in areas with rolling hills. High density housing by it's very nature needs flat areas and tends to ruin nature directly around it. Basically, I'm saying that the low density areas are not nice because they have nice vistas, most don't.

Also, in Toronto high density housing IS being built along the lake front. But there are two problems: there is no mass transit from that area (!) and the high density houseing obscures the view from previous high density housing built just a few lots inland. So it's only possible for a select few high density buildings to have nice views.

a cellphone GPS based service which garentees a small electric car is waiting for you at at the terminal.

A similar service which can pick you up at the terminal and take you and a few others to work - Like a disney golf-train.

Given the cellphone can know where you are - and where you need too get - it could optimize a last mile service based on current demand and requirements - rather than a fixed - use it or lose it schedule.

Nice ideas, but I'm skeptical that the oil/car companies would let this fly. :( People have tried selling this idea, and cities just don't go for it. Maybe it needs some more voices calling for it or something.

Re:Theory and Implementation

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I agree, the liars can cause a problem, but this is an implementation issue, not a system issue.

That's kind of like saying that Microsoft allowing executable code in e-mail messages is an implementation issue, not a system issue. Idealy, the system should be engineered from the start to prevent parasites and viruses from arising to begin with. If it doesn't, then the system needs to be scraped and replaced with something better, just as many of us scrap Windows in favor of Linux.

If an entity can not create more value then it consumes it should die. This goes for both companies, ideas and people. Harsh, but that is the nature of the system. It is also the way of natural selection.

I would point out that if this is the case, then civilization itself is way too much of a bother- the wrong people are dying off thanks to parasites and viruses in the system. If we're going to have natural selection anyway, why bother having a civilization that protects the weak (the parasites and viruses) while punishing the strong (those who actually do the work)?