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🏙️ How Cities Work as Systems

Trace a city service from inputs to outputs, see how dependencies create cascades, and weigh measurement, control, trade-offs, and resilience.

lessons

~15 min

to learn

🤖 Technology

subject

Adults

level

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What you’ll learn

A city is a chain of servicesExplain why urban life depends on interdependent services rather than one citywide machine.Cities connect infrastructure, people, and institutions; a failure in one service can affect others, but the cascade depends on local design.
Inputs, processes, and outputsTrace a city service from what enters it to what residents can observe.Naming inputs, transformations, and outputs turns a vague city problem into a testable system trace.
Control means watching and adjustingRecognize measurement and feedback as tools for operating a city service.Control loops compare observed conditions with targets, while measurement choices determine whose experience becomes visible.
Trade-offs and resilienceEvaluate urban choices through cost, access, dependencies, and recovery.Resilience means preparing for disruption and recovering essential functions, not making a city invulnerable.

Questions this course answers

Why is a city better studied as connected services than as one machine?

NIST models community infrastructure as interdependent physical, social, and economic systems, so the service and its dependencies matter.

Which sequence best describes a simple system trace?

Naming what enters, what changes it, and what can be observed makes a system explanation causal.

What does a control loop add to a city service?

NIST describes smart and connected systems as using sensing, analysis, decisions, and actuation; the course applies that pattern carefully to city operations.

Why can one citywide average be misleading?

A summary measure can conceal distribution and unequal experience; a good planning question specifies whose conditions it represents.

What is the careful meaning of urban resilience?

NIST defines community resilience around preparing, adapting, withstanding, and recovering, not invulnerability.

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