Urban Growth Models

models can perform the dual functions of organizing knowledge of how urban systems work and grow, and providing support for analyzing policy and planning proposals. Modern urban modeling has progressed substantially in the last fifty years, as a result of extensive development supported by massive data collection and growing computing power. Much of the development has been impelled by the needs of transportation analysis, but land use or locational modeling has advanced well beyond initially fragmented and descriptive theories. The major difficulty arises out the underlying importance of resource allocation, which is influenced by complex behavioral patterns and requires an interdisciplinary approach. These behaviors are defined too narrowly in purely economic models, and too descriptively in purely observational models of discrete choice. This dichotomy is a major focus of modeling, and is being gradually overcome.