Associate Professor Perry Pei-Ju Yang Releases New Book

Front cover of Perry Yang's new book, "Urban Systems Design."
Front cover of Perry Yang's new book, "Urban Systems Design."

How do we integrate urban design, systems science, and data analytics in the context of the smart city movement? Explore potential answers in the new book, Urban Systems Design: Creating Sustainable Smart Cities in the Internet of Things Era, written by Perry Yang, associate professor for the Georgia Tech Schools of City and Regional Planning and Architecture, and director of the Eco Urban Lab for the Georgia Tech College of Design, and his co-editor and co-author, Yoshiki Yamagata, principal researcher and head of Global Carbon Project International Office at the Center for Global Environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies.

Urban Systems Design analyzes the ways in which society utilizes Internet of Things-based sharing platforms in the context of smart community dimensions—energy, transport, urban form, and human comfort—and explores how these platforms can be used to improve community health and welfare. 

With recent achievements in research regarding the potential impact of Internet of Things and big data, Urban Systems Design delves into how to identify, structure, measure, and monitor urban sustainability standards and progress. This book reviews the financial, institutional, policy, and technical needs required for a successful implementation in smart cities. 

“Urban design is becoming data-driven. Empowered by new tools and technologies, cities are now far more designable than ever before. Ability to handle how massive data are captured, analyzed and applied in cities is now critical to addressing problems occurring in places, neighborhoods and cities. Urban systems design offers an approach to designing new forms of sustainable, resilient and socially responsible cities, in the face of increasing impact of emerging technologies, big data and urban automation to people, communities and their placemaking,” said Professor Yang.