Darren Nel

Complexity science offers valuable conceptual and analytical tools for addressing multifaceted socio-technical challenges in policymaking, promoting a holistic, dynamic, and adaptive framework that moves beyond traditional linear approaches. Despite its potential, complexity science has struggled to gain traction in the mainstream policy debates. This article examines the non-technical-human and organisational-barriers impeding the adoption of complexity science in policymaking and proposes strategies to overcome these obstacles. The barriers fall into three categories: management, institutional, and political challenges; communication and trust issues; and ethical considerations. The article synthesises insights from 37 interviews with complexity and policy experts to understand challenges and identify effective strategies. The findings reveal that entrenched governance structures, short-term political incentives, and limited awareness of complexity concepts among policymakers hinder the adoption of complexity-informed approaches. Additionally, a preference for simpler, more immediate solutions further obstructs the integration of complexity science into policymaking. Ethical considerations, such as data privacy and potential biases within models, also present significant challenges. Several strategies are identified to overcome these barriers, including fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, enhancing transparency in model development, and establishing experimental policy labs. The findings highlight the need for targeted training programs to equip policymakers with the skills to navigate complex systems and emphasise the importance of establishing platforms for interdisciplinary dialogue. These strategies aim to build capacity, improve understanding, foster trust, and encourage more adaptive and holistic policymaking approaches, ultimately facilitating the integration of complexity science into mainstream policymaking.

The deepening integration of social-technical systems creates immensely complex environments, creating increasingly uncertain and unpredictable circumstances. Given this context, policymakers have been encouraged to draw on complexity science-informed approaches in policymaking to help grapple with and manage the mounting complexity of the world. For nearly eighty years, complexity-informed approaches have been promising to change how our complex systems are understood and managed, ultimately assisting in better policymaking. Despite the potential of complexity science, in practice, its use often remains limited to a few specialised domains and has not become part and parcel of the mainstream policy debate. To understand why this might be the case, we question why complexity science remains nascent and not integrated into the core of policymaking. Specifically, we ask what the non-technical challenges and barriers are preventing the adoption of complexity science into policymaking. To address this question, we conducted an extensive literature review. We collected the scattered fragments of text that discussed the non-technical challenges related to the use of complexity science in policymaking and stitched these fragments into a structured framework by synthesising our findings. Our framework consists of three thematic groupings of the non-technical challenges: (a) management, cost, and adoption challenges; (b) limited trust, communication, and acceptance; and (c) ethical barriers. For each broad challenge identified, we propose a mitigation strategy to facilitate the adoption of complexity science into policymaking. We conclude with a call for action to integrate complexity science into policymaking further.

East Asian urbanization is characterized by complex processes of extensive densi fication. Fuelled by rapid economic growth, Asian cities' size, scale, and physical dimensions remain incomparable to any Western se ing. During the past thirty years alone, various concepts have a empted to de fine hyperdensity, layering, and intensity as core principles of Asian urban development. Although these concepts explore the physical properties of development, few examples provide insights into the behavioural and social dimensions of such complex morphological se ings. This paper examines the eff ects of urban compaction and volumetric urbanism on liveability in East Asian cities. Hong Kong exempli fies an extreme scale and rate of densi fication. Podium developments – commercial plinths elevated above street level that connect large residential towers to commercial complexes – are one of the city's most common development types. The hypothesis is that the combination of diff erent types of podium development results in the interiorization of the urban realm, which compresses public services, social engagements, and behavioural conditions into diverse privatized and fragmented 'public interiors'. To explore these conditions, this paper first outlines the conceptual premise of reading urban se ings through the lens of volumetric urban compaction. This framework combines urban compaction and volumetric urbanism. Second, the paper discusses theories that deal with the links between spatial se ings and behavioural traits. Privatization is of particular interest here, including those processes in which the private and the public become interchangeable conditions or where the temporary occupation of functions occurs. The diff erent concepts – volumetric urban compaction and interiority – are studied within Olympian City, a podium development in Kowloon (Hong Kong). Through fi eldwork, the case is investigated in terms of the elements that make up Olympian City's spatial con figuration and how diff erent groups use space at diff erent times of the day and week. The case study shows that Hong Kong's development follows an economically driven model of volumetric urban compaction; it supports a larger privatization strategy that depends on the interiorization of the city to the extent that makes the overall structure highly exclusive, static, and controlled.

Cities are becoming more complex as their population, size, diversity and networks increase. Many urban systems are emergent phenomena, while others have been deliberately created. Hence, the governance of urban centres and regions amid the issues of climate change, environmental degradation, economic crises, increasing inequality and social unrest demands an appreciation of the complexity of the city. It also requires building resilience on many scales to deal with current and future challenges. This chapter focuses on fostering urban resilience within a smart city and proposes various principles to link these concepts. The proposed principles draw on the characteristics of complex systems which facilitate our understanding of modern, multifaceted, urban environments. The ways in which multiple urban systems operate and interact at different spatial-temporal scales depending on the area’s context are discussed. Through examples from the Global South, the vulnerabilities of urban systems are identified, which smart city planning could have helped address. Principles for the governance of smart and resilient cities that extend beyond disaster risk management to build general resilience through sound planning and governance are then presented.

The City of Tshwane has experienced significant political, socio-economic and spatial changes. The lives and daily use patterns of different people in the city, as well as public spaces changed. While some people have retreated to semi-privatised space, others are enjoying unrestricted use of space in more traditional parks and quality public spaces in former marginalised areas. This raises questions regarding the impact of these changes on urban resilience, especially in the context of the new Tshwane 2055 vision calling for a “liveable, inclusive and resilient city”. This study analyses six public spaces in three different neighbourhood types in Pretoria and highlights the emergence of three trends - degradation, adaptation and transformation. The paper argues that these trends have implications for urban resilience of both the public space and the immediate surroundings in terms of diversity, intensity, proximity and connectivity in and around these spaces. Limited diversity proximity, intensity and connectivity strain opportunities for adaptation, while radical intervention at a specific point in time can expedite the trajectory of change and bring about rapid transformation. This has implications for urban planning and design in terms of deciding the level, extent and nature of interventions in particular parts of cities.

While cities have become gradually more vertical and complex over the past century, our methods for conceptualising their characteristics and measuring their forms and functions are still largely based in a horizontal mindset. Recent work has sought to shift urban discourse towards understanding cities according to their volumetric properties. Moving the debate further, this paper approaches volumetric urbanism from a morphological perspective, setting out a research agenda that operationalises the concept as a means of better capturing the morphological characteristics of cities as volumetric entities. First, we deconstruct volumetric urbanism into the five basic building blocks that define volumetric morphologies: density, functional mix, compaction and compression, complex networks and interaction intensity. Next, we propose two methods for capturing the urban volumetrics of cities based on spatial and network interaction and apply them to a hypothetical case and a preliminary study of Hong Kong. We conclude by arguing that a volumetric approach is required to capture the complex form of compressed, multi-layered and highly connected cities. In response, urban morphological and planning discourses must move away from the horizontal analytical mindset, embrace a multi-layered three-dimensional view of cities and place greater emphasis on spatial configurations and network relations by measuring interaction.

Planning for dynamic cities is a perennial problem that continues to grow in importance in a rapidly changing world. This paper presents a conceptual framework to understand urban change through a complex adaptive systems approach. This framework includes a process of (1) describing the system through setting boundaries and identifying the properties of the system, (2) identifying the patterns of change across scales and (3) mapping the change over time. The framework firstly, offers a tool to urban planners to approach some of the complexities of urban change and secondly, a foundation to engage with the challenge of developing alternative sustainable development models that are able to deal with the reality of complex, dynamic and interconnected urban systems and to cope with change and uncertainty in ways that build positive resilience and support regenerative design and development.