Mathematize urbes by humanizing them: Cities as Isobenefit Landscapes. Psycho-Economical distances and Isobenefit Lines

Abstract

The city reading proposed is a modern postmodern urbanism approach which quantifies but by passing through subjectivism. The isobenefit lines shown translate cities into benefit landscapes, subjective and continually changeable according to personal moods needs preferences and urban transformations. They read attractiveness and how they flow throughout the city. Doing it for each urban point and for each urban attraction, we obtain the isobenefit orography of the city, namely a map of its urban attractions and of their flows. This is a liquid surface rather than solid, as it varies across time and people. It is in this liquidness where resides the complexity of cities, their bottom up spirit and the dynamicity of equilibriums and networks. People do not necessarily go in the most accessible points, but where they need and want to, and, they flow through paths they need or choose to pass through. It is also introduced the likeability of places and paths: in addition to the usual parameters currently used, which weight distances in terms of physical distance, cost, time or mental easiness representations, psycho-economical distances used in the isobenefit lines proposed here, also consider how a place and a path pleases us. According to the Underground Hedonic Theory, this pleasure to pass through or to stay in agreeable areas has an underground and an inertia effect too which contributes to delight our lives. The final purpose of the science of cities and urban design is to understand cities and make them efficient and attractive to please our lives in them.