Poli-Plex-Icon: A Tool for the City Image Visualization in the Age of Complexity

Abstract

Poli-Plex-Icon is a visualization tool that combines ideas of urban science and visual arts. It was initially developed in a Ph.D. research (2013–2018) that explored the perception of the city (city image) in history via its visualizations. Poli-Plex-Icon current applications include cultural projects, visual art exhibitions and urban visualization workshops. Poli-Plex-Icon visualizes the city image with respect to complexity science and therefore it describes the city as a system of organized complexity. Accordingly, the complex city image presents properties, such as visual ambiguity and bottom-up formation process. Poli-Plex-Icon combines interdisciplinary theories, techniques, and practices, such as urban mapping, textual analysis, visual semiotics, and layer superimposition. The incorporation of elements from planning, mapping and painting, make the visualizations both informative and communicative. They adopt thus a double, scientific and artistic role. They serve both as facts and artworks. In the paper, we will briefly discuss the concept of city image and its visualization in plans, maps, and paintings, unveiling the path to the current connection of the city with complexity. Then we will present the Poli-Plex-Icon tool. Firstly, we will describe the tool model, which was developed based on Calvino’s novel the Invisible Cities. Secondly, we will briefly discuss Poli-Plex-Icon applications, and will postulate some thoughts and reflections for its further development.