Ramon Gras, Aretian co-founder, interviewed by Camins.cat about Urbanism and its future

Ramon Gras Alomà, Aretian co-founder, was recently interviewed by the Col·legi d'Enginyers de Camins, Canals i Ports de Catalunya (Camins.cat) on the topic of Urbanism and City Science. During the interview, he explains the historical roots of the new science of cities developed by Aretian Urban Analytics and Design, as well as other important topics related to urban environments, such as COVID-19, for instance.

Read the interview here.

Ramon starts by describing how analytical tools and methodologies have affected urbanism by revealing new knowledge and insights on how cities function. He explains that data analysis, Complexity Science, and Network Theory-based Machine Learning allow us to produce digital models to study cities more closely than ever before and use this knowledge to plan, design and develop the sustainable cities of tomorrow while involving experts from every possible field.

As questions on the topic of COVID-19 and a potential return to smaller communities and urban spaces arise, Ramon describes the fact that each urban settlement scale has intrinsic advantages and disadvantages. According to research developed on the matter, the growth of cities creates an exponential increase in the diversity of urban services, the access to trades, the diversity of industries, the concentration of knowledge-intensive professions, the performance of innovation, or wage levels, but also other gives rise to negatives such as crime, pollution or inequality. Ramon also mentions the novel concept of the 15-minute city recently developed by Carlos Moreno, and further studied by Aretian in a research paper in collaboration with the University of Paris - La Sorbonne.

Ramon concludes by praising the spectacular advances that have taken place in the field of urbanism in the last twenty years, offering great possibilities to understand more deeply the cause-effect relationships in urban planning and to develop design visions that integrate qualitative and quantitative elements, as well as elements of art and science, in a harmonious way.