Abstract
We propose a non-equilibrium framework for modelling the evolution of cities, which describes intra-urban migration as an irreversible diffusive process. We validate this framework using the actual migration data for the Australian capital cities. With respect to the residential relocation, the population is shown to be composed of two distinct groups, exhibiting different relocation frequencies. In the context of the developed framework, these groups can be interpreted as two components of a binary fluid mixture, each with its own diffusive relaxation time. Using this approach, we obtain long-term predictions of the cities’ spatial structures, which define their equilibrium population distribution.
Highlights
We propose a diffusion model describing migration processes in a closed system from the perspective of non-equilibrium thermodynamics
We propose a concise “phenomenological” approach that considers the migration flows from the perspective of diffusion
We develop an analogy between intra-urban migration and diffusion. This allows us to interpret the heterogeneous dynamics of intraurban migration as diffusion in a multi-component fluid mixture
Summary
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