Organized by Sergio Porta (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow) & Philipp Mitteroecker (KLI & University of Vienna)

Urban Evo-Devo transfers knowledge from evolutionary developmental biology to urban morphology. We pioneer a new science of urban form evolution, by drawing from current theories of biological and cultural evolution (Pagel, 2009, 2012) as well as ​​systems ecology (Holling & Goldberg, 1971). We build on concepts from evolutionary developmental biology ​​(evo-devo), which offers a rich source of explanations for the individual development and collective evolution of complex systems.

Urban Evo-Devo builds on the largest existing dataset of a taxonomy of urban form, which describes and classifies numerically 100+M buildings in central Europe, by applying on them modelling techniques established in evolutionary biology to infer descent from similarity.