Modelling Cities

Interesting videos via WorldChanging.com, showing a computerized system developed in Germany, with the rather tortuous acronym of ARTHUR (standing for Augmented Round Table for ArcHitecture and URban planning -- yuck). Though the acronym is wretched, the idea of developing real-time visualization models for cities is compelling.

The immediate question, of course, is whether or not these visualization models are connected to formal models that predict any of the flows out of actual land-uses, such as pedestrian or traffic behavior, or pollution flows. Though there is numerous evidence regarding the influence of physical form on human behavior, I am inherently skeptical of any "grand-unified theory" that can predict human behavior within an environment as complex as the city.

I've written before about space syntax, a theory that tries to explain too much. There is also a rich tradition in computer modeling of urban environments. The history of SimCity is detailed in my friend Daniel's paper "A city is not a toy", published by the London School of Economics. Other contemporary urban modeling efforts include UrbanSim, which is being developed at the University of Washington.

More academic reviews of models of urban growth can be found in a number of papers, including:

Allen, P. and Sanglier, M., 1978, "Dynamic models of urban growth". Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 1:265-280.

Berling-Wolff, S., and Wu, J., 2004, "Urban growth models: a historical review". Ecological Research, 19:119-129.

I also found an excellent list of annotated links about agent-based modeling.