CHOAMs Can Fight Urban Fragmentation and Gentrification, While Supporting Synergies, Complexity, Diversity, and Contextuality: Empirical Study of Fifteen Cities Across the United States, Europe, and New Zealand

Urban ills such as urban fragmentation and gentrification cause losses in the range of trillions of US-dollars in the United States alone. Here, we demonstrate how these urban ills can be avoided through implementation of a nonlinear modeling framework that we test on fifteen cities across the United States, Europe, and New Zealand. We refer to our framework as Chains of Urban Activity Models (CHOAMs). From a modeling perspective, CHOAMs stand out through the systematic introduction of nonlinear mathematics which can capture many nonlinear aspects of urban complexity, contextuality, diversity, antagonism, synergy, and, ultimately, perceived value. Typically, architects spend a whole career to develop an intuitive sense of these urban phenomena. By comparison, CHOAMs can be trained within hours, and their technology can be easily shared and expanded. This inspires us to suggest that CHOAMs could spearhead an evolution of new nonlinear urban modeling frameworks and theories.