“…Urban growth modeling is an important method of urban land‐use optimization, which is considered complicated because the decisions on land‐use allocation must be made with respect to not only what activities to select, but also how much land to allocate to each and where to allocate the land (Cao et al, ; Cao, ). Thus far, many optimization algorithms have been employed to deal with land‐use optimization problems, for example: the Tabu search algorithm (Qi, Altinakar, Vieira, & Alidaee, ), simulated annealing algorithm (Santé‐Riveira, Boullón‐Magán, Crecente‐Maseda, & Miranda‐Barrós, ), genetic algorithm (Cao et al, ; Cao & Ye, ; Li & Parrott, ), particle swarm optimization algorithm (Masoomi, Mesgari, & Hamrah, ), ant colony optimization algorithm (Liu, Li, Shi, Huang, & Liu, ), bee colony algorithm (Yang, Sun, Peng, Shao, & Chi, ), and hybridization of these algorithms (Mohammadi, Nastaran, & Sahebgharani, ). Spatial optimization methods in urban growth modeling are commonly based on the cellular automata (CA) model, which coincides with the complex theory in which macroscale and global patterns can be generated from the microscale by local interactions of individual cells (Almeida, Gleriani, Castejon, & Soares‐Filho, ; Cao, Huang, Li, & Li, ; Li, Liu, & Yu, ; Lin, Huang, Chen, & Huang, ; Liu et al, ; Li, Chen, Liu, Liang, & Wang, ; Liu, Liang, Li, Xu, & Ou, ).…”