CASA Working Paper 187

Urban and Regional Modelling: The Science and Contributions to Planning


What are we modelling and why?
Models are representations of theories of systems of interest. Urban and regional models are representations of our understanding of cities and regions: this is the science. An appropriate ambition is to represent all the main elements - the suubsystems of a city - (say) and their interdependencies in a comprehensive model. However, it is sometimes appropriate to work with submodels - for example of the retail system and this provides a useful demonstrator to represent key ideas.

Why are we modelling? First because the science is interesting! But secondly, in suitable circumstances, we can apply this science: these models can be used for 'What if?' forecasting and for evaluating alternative plans - the planning equivalent of 'flight simulators'.

Authors: Alan Wilson

Publication Date: 9th August 2012

RPS ID:

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