Luis Bettencourt — Urban Science Research Seminar

​​The Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) at NYU Tandon welcomes you to attend the lecture "Cities and human development" by Luís Bettencourt, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. This event, hosted as part of the Fall 2025 Urban Science Research Seminar Series, will be held in Room 1201 at 370 Jay Street.

​​About the Lecture

​Cities and human development

​We have made great progress recently in our quantitative understanding of cities structurally, as networks of human interactions, built spaces, and infrastructure.  However, a similarly ambitious, generative, and empirically testable framework for the long-term dynamics of cities --especially in terms of human development-- is still missing.  As a result, I will show that questions of human development in cities remain mired in apparent paradoxes: At national scales, urbanization is strongly associated with broad and systematic human development and economic growth. However, on smaller scales, of local communities and neighborhoods, we often observe persistent poverty, segregation and exclusion, associated also with relative deficits in health, education and many other measures of well-being.  In this talk, I’ll present evidence across nations and scales for how these micro- and macro-patterns of urban change co-exist. I will discuss ongoing work for how they can be understood, and how we may better tackle uneven development and inequality. I will also show how new kinds of data and methods of analysis become necessary, and how an emerging theory of urban dynamics will fundamentally reframe age-old issues of policy and governance.  

​​About the Speaker

​Luís M. A. Bettencourt is a Professor of Ecology and Evolution and the College at the University of Chicago. He is also Associate Faculty of the Department of Sociology and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

​​Visitor Information

​​This event will be held in Room 1201 at 370 Jay St. Please visit the NYU Tandon website for directions and a campus map. Advance registration through Luma is required for campus access at NYU for external guests.

​​About the Urban Science Research Seminar Series

​​The Center for Urban Science + Progress’s annual Research Seminar series features leading voices in the growing field of urban informatics examining real-world challenges facing cities and urban environments around the world. The Fall 2025 series is organized by Assistant Professors Graham Dove, Yuki Miura, Qi Sun, and Takahiro Yabe.