Urban models: Progress and perspective

Abstract

Urban modelling is an important branch of land use science. It integrates geography, surveying and mapping, information science, system science, economics, sociology and other disciplines to establish urban models, which have been used to provide support for urban policymaking or analyses. Urban models are used to understand, analyse, evaluate and reproduce the process of urban development, and predict the consequence of urban planning scenarios. In this paper, we provide a systematic review of urban models, including the evaluation, classification, application of urban models, and the timeline of urban models’ development. According to their modelling styles and applications, urban models can be classified into three categories: aggregate static models of economic and spatial interaction, urban dynamics models, and behavioural models of individual agents which linked to spatial location. According to the different modelling methods, urban models can be classified into two categories: top-down and bottom-up. Nowadays, emerging technologies, especially Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), are gradually but significantly changing the organization form of urban economic activities. It enables regions to break the location limitation and join in the national even global industry division, and that triggers a new bottom-up rural urbanization process, which formed a significant challenge for urban models. Based on above discussion, we proposed two perspectives for improvements of urban models, inculding the integration of ICT with tradtional urban models and integaration of top-down and bottom-up models.