Geoff Boeing

Please join us for the annual Ken Steif lecture featuring Geoff Boeing of the University of Southern California.  Geoff will give a lecture on "Universality in Urban Street Network Form".

Urban street networks shape accessibility, mobility, and urban resilience. Spatial analysts commonly use geometric and topological indicators of form to analyze them. Prior work has emphasized differences between cities' street network forms, but this talk argues that they actually exhibit remarkable universality across urban areas. We model the street networks of every urban area in the world and calculate street network form indicators. We then compare these indicators' statistical dispersion to that of other urban characteristics unrelated to network form. Despite vast differences in geography and planning history, cities converge on a consistently narrow and homogeneous set of street network forms---a phenomenon we do not see for city size and other urban characteristics. Street networks' geometric and topological forms show remarkable universality---i.e., convergent homogeneity---across cities of drastically different origins and planning paradigms, which we argue is due to physical constraints, urbanization processes, and optimization.

Geoff Boeing is an Associate Professor in USC’s Department of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis, the Director of USC’s Urban Data Lab, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. His research and teaching focus on geospatial data science, urban networks, and information landscapes. His work has won the Nobel Sustainability Award and the Stough-Johansson Springer Award, and is regularly featured in the media including The Economist, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. He developed and maintains the OSMnx street network modeling software and has served as a consultant for several planning, policymaking, and public health organizations. He has never played a round of golf or drunk a cup of coffee in his life.

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu. Please note, we require at least five (5) business days’ notice.