Urban modeling for streets using vector cellular automata: Framework and its application in Beijing

Abstract

Zones, cells, and parcels have long been regarded as the main units of analysis in urban modeling. However, only limited attention has been paid to street-level urban modeling. The emergence of fine-scale open and new data available from various sources has created substantial opportunities for research on urban modeling at the street level, particularly for modeling the spatiotemporal process of urban phenomena. In this paper, the street is adopted as the spatial unit of an urban model, and a conceptual framework for such modeling based on cellular automata is proposed. The validity of the proposed framework is verified by an empirical application to the urban space within the Fifth Ring Road in Beijing from 2014 to 2018. The results show that the density of points of interest simulated by the cellular automata model for 2018 is basically consistent with the actual distribution according to direct observation, and there is no significant difference in the proportion of high, medium, and low points of interest density streets between different ring roads. In addition, the deviation rate and Kappa index are 0.1171 and 0.97, respectively, indicating the proposed model can replicate historical patterns well and predict the transition of points of interest density at the street level. Subsequently, we considered three scenarios, adopting 2018 as the base year and using the proposed model to simulate the distribution of points of interest density in 2022 and the changes in points of interest density from 2018 to 2022. The conceptual framework and empirical application also provide support for urban planning and design based on the integration of linear public space and big data.

What does urban informatics add to planning support technology?

“…This special issue presents a collection of studies that connects planning scholars to the new horizons of planning support in the era of urban informatics and smart cities. It supplements decades of PSS literature presenting novel approaches to core model development (Basu andFerreira, 2020: 1397;Jia et al, 2020Jia et al, : 1418 with an increasing focus on the integration of the planning process and the applications of PSS technologies (Jiang et al, 2020(Jiang et al, : 1343Page et al, 2020Page et al, : 1508. User interface developments are also presented (Pettit et al, 2020(Pettit et al, : 1490Yang et al, 2020Yang et al, : 1474 as are urban analytics that utilize recently available big data sets (Pan et al, : 1456Yang, 2020Yang, : 1440.…”

“…The urban informatics value-added proposition is also realized in an enhanced understanding of the science, complexity and dynamics of cities. Pan et al ( : 1456 and Jia et al (2020Jia et al ( : 1418 use large, voluminous, and diverse data sources (address change data from postal records and POI data from navigation systems) to better understand the science of cities and advance the theories of complex urban systems. Xu et al (2020Xu et al ( : 1361 and Yang (2020Yang ( : 1440 contribute to the understanding of urban dynamics, urban mobility and their resulting impacts.…”

“…Four different papers demonstrate the range and variability in current planning support model approaches. They include models of urban landscape patterns (Xu et al, 2020(Xu et al, : 1361, a land use change scenario modeling approach (Cai et al, 2020(Cai et al, : 1380, a new land use and transport interaction model (Basu and Ferreira, 2020: 1397) focusing on residential location and vehicle ownership choices, and a new approach to urban cellular automata (CA) modeling that takes into account future points-of-interest (POI) density distributions on urban streets (Jia et al, 2020(Jia et al, : 1418.…”

“…They find that LUTI models can be useful for helping to align current transportation policies (autonomous vehicles) with current market conditions (car lite communities). Jia et al (2020Jia et al ( : 1418 adopt the street scale as the unit of analysis (also utilizing CA), but in this case to simulate POI density. The conceptual framework and analysis "lay a foundation for potential investigations into the relation(ship) between the micro-scale built environment (and) macroscale socioeconomic attributes in urban public space(s)".…”

Simulating favorable adsorption in lithium-ion batteries using a novel cellular-automaton-based method

“…The possibility to use intuitive local rules enables CA to study the effect of different assumptions at a small scale on the collective response at a larger scale. This method has successfully simulated a vast range of phenomena, from urban planning [16] to living cell studies [17]. As a side product of CA, another method called Lattice Gas Cellular Automata (LGCA) is also proposed.…”