Batty, Michael (1945–)

Michael Batty is one of the most renowned and forward-thinking, analytical-planning researchers of his generation, and it is from this perspective that he has made enduring contributions to GIScience. He graduated in Town and Country Planning from the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) in 1966 and earned a PhD from the University of Wales in 1984. He has had a successful and varied career on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean: After holding junior faculty positions at the universities of Manchester, Reading (United Kingdom), and Waterloo (Canada), he became professor of city and regional planning at Cardiff University (United Kingdom) in 1979, where he also served (between 1983 and 1986) as dean of the School of Environmental Design. In 1990, he moved to the State University of New York at Buffalo in order to serve as site director of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1995 to establish and direct the interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London, where he also serves as Bartlett Professor of Planning. Since 1981, he has also worked as editor-in-chief of the journal Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2001 and was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) for services to geography in 2004.

Many of his contributions to the development of GIScience are summarized in the 2003 CASA-edited collection, Advanced Spatial Analysis: The CASA Book of GIS. The most recent summary of his path-breaking contributions to the understanding of the size, shape, scale, dimension, and functioning of city systems can be found in his 2005 monograph, Cities and Complexity. His 1976 book, Urban Modelling, defined the agenda for quantitative analysis of city systems over the following 25 years, and his 1994 book Fractal Cities provides an early yet rich statement of ideas concerning the way in which cities grow and change. Other key research has focused on the development of agent-based models in GIScience and the laws that characterize population growth.