Geospatial Analysis and Modelling of Urban Structure and Dynamics

A Coming of Age: Geospatial Analysis and Modelling in the Early Twenty First Century Forty years ago when spatial analysis first emerged as a distinct theme within geography’s quantitative revolution, the focus was largely on consistent methods for measuring spatial correlation. The concept of spatial au- correlation took pride of place, mirroring concerns in time-series analysis about similar kinds of dependence known to distort the standard probability theory used to derive appropriate statistics. Early applications of spatial correlation tended to reflect geographical patterns expressed as points. The perspective taken on such analytical thinking was founded on induction, the search for pattern in data with a view to suggesting appropriate hypotheses which could subsequently be tested. In parallel but using very different techniques came the development of a more deductive style of analysis based on modelling and thence simulation. Here the focus was on translating prior theory intoforms for generating testable predictions whose outcomes could be compared with observations about some system or phenomenon of interest. In the intervening years, spatial analysis has broadened to embrace both inductive and deductive approaches, often combining both in different mixes for the variety of problems to which it is now applied.

The increasingly urbanized world has created various problems of environment, climate, consumption of resources, and public health, which are closely linked to the side-effects of urbanization such as sprawl, congestion, housing affordability and loss of open space. Fundamental to the urban problems are two separate yet related issues: urban structure and urban dynamics. The chapters collected in this book present an excellent profile of the current state of geospatial analysis and modelling, and demonstrate how these approaches can contribute to the study of various urban issues. The book addresses key themes including new ways of capturing data digitally at the individual level, the development of systems based around networks, the notion of linking hierarchy to networks to morphology as in complexity theory, and the development of new ways of integrating diverse urban processes through simulation paying careful attention to the basic econometric and statistical principles of spatial analysis.

With a foreword by Michael Batty and an epilog by Michael F. Goodchild