中文摘要：

将城市作为复杂适应性系统（CAS）研究其自组织临界性（SOC）具有重要的理论意义和实践价值，这方面的探索工作刚刚开始。本文从城市的地理空间角度出发，论证城市是一种复杂适应性系统。城市在本质上是不可还原的，我们可以根据积木的机制将城市分解，但分解的结果对解释城市的复杂行为丝毫没有帮助。由于城市和城市体系都具有分形结构、服从Zipf定律，且具有1／f噪声的特征，由此判断城市地理系统具有自组织临界性质。自组织临界性与复杂性适应性立论的视角不同，但可以统一于“混沌的边缘”这一概念。

英文摘要：

As complex spatial systems, cities are discussed using the theories of complex adaptive systems （CAS） and self-organized criticality （SOC）. First, cities are considered as CASs by including aggregation, nonlinearity, flows, and diversity, and three mechanisms inclu analogy with four properties ding tagging, internal models, and building blocks. However, cities seem to be divided into a series of building blocks, but we cannot use the interaction of blocks to interpret the behaviors of cities at the macro level. Second, three indications of SOC including fractals, Zipf＇ s law, and 1 over f noise are researched by means of mathematical transformation and empirical observations. A discovery is that fractals are the principal marks of SOC. Both the concepts of CAS and SOC can be unified on ＂the edge of chaos＂, another important concept in complex sciences.