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| THE DEVELOPMENT AND FUTURE OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN MODELS IN WESTERN COUNTRIES |
| FANG Yan-gang, LIU Ji-sheng |
| College of Urban and Environment Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China |
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Abstract Metropolitan areas in China face a pressing need evaluate urban development strategies.This need, placed in the context of sustainable development and administrative regimes, has kindled an interest in the use of urban models. Because of the economical, technical and educational reasons, the development of urban model in China is of low-level, and its applications are much less. It is significant to retrospect and introduce the development of contemporary urban models in western countries.
Urban models in western countries originated in 1950's. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the computer revolution was making great strides.Processing power was increasing, memory prices were dropping,and software was becoming cheaper and more powerful. Urban models began to grow again, but one lesson was learned that modularity was going to be a key to success. New mathematical and economic theories were developed Computers made previously unsolvable problems, such as partial differential equations, solvable. Modelers began to build modular models that could apply different theories and mathematics to different parts of the problem. The rise of complexity science changed the view of urban system, and gave birth to urban complex models. The contemporary models were used in planning practice in more and more countries. Beginning with a brief retrospect of earlier urban models that are rooted in transportation and land-use planning and form the foundation on which nearly all modeling efforts are based, this paper investigates some of the techniques, approaches and theories that have been applied in contemporary urban mode studies,and indicates that advances in spatial analysis and GIS to analyze and display data have been essential to urban modelers and planners. Incorporating ecological processes have expanded the use of urban models to biologists and ecologists. Theories such as neural networks, fractal geometry and ecological energetic may continue to have an impact on urban models.
However,the up-to-date urban models also have some shortcomings such as using the old social and economical laws to study the new urban realities which have been changed greatly by informatization and globalization, the immature utilization of complexity science and method, the less integration of complexity model and GIS.In the end, this paper presents that future urban modeling should focus on the new urban changes, utilize the complexity science and method, and develop computer techniques.
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Received: 25 November 2006
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2007, Vol. 22 
