December 19 – LISER Researcher, Justin Delloye, has received the 2018 Dissertation Award of the Regional Science Association International for his thesis entitled “Urban Morphodynamics: Reconciling Location Theory and Complex Systems” during the North American Meetings of the RSAI in San Antonio, USA. 

His thesis focuses on the important role that cities play in the global effort to achieve sustainable development. In that perspective, new adaptive approaches of urban planning call for a reliable understanding of Urban Morphodynamics: the evolution of the spatial structure of an urban system from elementary interactions between its components. In his thesis, Justin provides theoretical and methodological contributions to Urban Morphodynamics from the integration Location Theory, which embodies a long tradition of studies on the economic determinants of the location of economic activities, and Complex Systems, which provide a recent description on how cities self-organize from the dynamic interactions of many individuals. His work shows that both disciplines can be reconciled in a consistent theory of Urban Morphodynamics, which has the operational potential to support the design of urban policies with strong theoretical insights.