Paper 249

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EMERGENT PATTERNS IN URBAN FORM



Marko PETERLIN
Senior Adviser
Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning
Office for Spatial Development
Dunajska 21
SI-1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Tel: +386 1 478 70 52
Fax: +386 1 478 70 10
E-mail: marko.peterlin@gov.si




Abstract: What we are looking for in this paper is how a multitude of
decisions made by people interacting in regular cycles result in distinct and
recognizable patterns in space that were not anticipated in any single
decision. Through the overview of emergence and its properties, illustrated on
the famous example of a computer program Life, we try to reveal the nature
of emergent patterns. As decision-making is of central importance in the
making of urban form we also make the connection between emergence and
decision-making through hierarchical levels in emergence. In the second half
of the paper some computer models that deal with urban form are examined
in detail. We search for emergent patterns in models and possibly for a link to
the processes in real urban form. In the conclusion we also stress the
importance of emergent patterns for urban and spatial planning.

Keywords: urban form, emergence, emergent patterns, urban modelling

EMERGENT PATTERNS IN URBAN FORM
1 INTRODUCTION
As Ball (1999, page 15) explains it is a central surprise in the pattern
formation that some patterns do not reflect the symmetry-breaking forces that
produced them. Such patterns are called emergent in this paper. To make the
concept clearer we should first delimit the notion of pattern. A definition
borrowed from Ball (1999, page 9) says that a pattern is a repeating array of
similar but not necessarily identical units as opposed to form which is "the
characteristic shape of a class of objects". For Holland (1998, page 4)
patterns seem to be more or less synonymous with regularities. A
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phenomenon can be called a regularity when it is recognizable and recurring
and only regular phenomena can also be emergent. Emergent phenomena as
well as emergent patterns are terms used in the context of emergence, which
is of our primary interest and will be dealt with in detail later. In urban form our
particular interest is directed towards emergent patterns in space, ones that
we can see and often touch.
Why do we focus on urban form? The physical structure of buildings and other
built environment that constitute urban form can be on the one hand
considered a result of diverse human activities, so the focus should perhaps
rather be on patterns of these activities. But on the other hand urban form is in
general the most stable of all patterns produced by human activities and the
one that is changing most slowly. Through this permanent nature urban form
not only affects back the human activities that produced it in the first place but
also constrains the possibilities fur future reconfigurations of these activities.
De Landa (1997, page 27) puts it sharply when he says that the purpose of
this "urban exoskeleton" is to control the movement of human flesh, so it has
a purpose similar to our endoskeletons.
2 EMERGENCE
What are emergent patterns and how they come into existence can help us
explain the research in the field of emergence. There has been a boom of
interest for this topic in recent years although the field of research has been
developing for several decades. As Knight (2003) emphasizes its roots go
back to 19
th
century philosophy when the term itself was coined and attributed
its present meaning. The present body of research started to form in the
1950s and as we will explain later it is closely connected with the
development of computers. It has gained important inputs though from several
fields of science like biology or physics as well as from social sciences and of
course systems theory. Recently De Landa (2002) has focused also on the
intersection of theories of self-organization, where research on emergence
stands out as an important part, and contemporary philosophy.
2.1 Properties of Emergence
As one might expect there is no precise definition of emergence available yet.
It is usually described through some of its properties. The most commonly
mentioned property of emergence is "much coming from little" (Holland, 1998,
page 1), which can perhaps explain the appeal of emergence in a profit-
oriented society. But there are also other properties that can shed some light
on the topic. Holland (1998, page 225) makes an attempt of recapitulating the
most important ones, a few of which we summarize below:
Emergence occurs in rule-based systems where relatively simple
components are interconnected to form an array. Interactions between
components repeat in cycles and are controlled by transition functions.
The interactions between components are non-linear, so the overall
behavior of the system cannot be obtained by summing the behaviors of
the isolated components. Patterns may appear in the system behavior,
that are not revealed by direct inspection of the rules satisfied by the
components.
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Emergent phenomena are typically persistent patterns with changing
components. They recall the standing wave that forms in front of a rock
in a fast-moving stream.
The function of a persistent pattern is determined by its context. The
same persistent patterns can have very different uses in different
contexts.
Interactions between persistent patterns add constraints and checks and
increasing number of such patterns in a system provides their increasing
competence. The number of possible interactions, and hence the
possible sophistication of response, rises extremely rapidly with the
number of interacting persistent patterns.
Persistent patterns often satisfy macrolaws. When this happens, the
behavior of the whole pattern can be described without reference to the
original rules that produced a pattern. Macrolaws are typically simple
relative to the behavioral details of the component elements.
As the research in the field of emergence tells us, there is an abundance of
emergent patterns present in our everyday life. They range from the
subatomic level to the consciousness. Life itself and all living creatures are
structured from persistent emergent patterns and so are human societies or
the weather. Cities are in fact common examples of emergent patterns as
well. The trouble is that only very small fragments of actual complex
processes that bring these entities into existence are clearly understood. That
is why the most commonly cited examples of emergent patterns are from very
simple computer programs where the behaviour of the patterns and of the
whole system can be examined in detail.
One such example is a program called Life, designed by John Conway back
in 1970. It is executing in a two-dimensional space and is a type of program
known as a cellular automaton. It is defined by just two states of points in
space and three transition functions (rules) between the points or cells, as
they are called. From the description below (Holland, 1998, page 139) we can
see some amazing properties that even such a simple program can exhibit:
Conways automaton can contain a simple, mobile, self-perpetuating pattern
called a glider. It consists of a pattern of five occupied cells, surrounded by
empty cells... Though five occupied cells are always involved, the pattern
changes shape in a regular way and it moves (glides) diagonally across the
space. At intervals of four time-steps, the pattern recurs, now shifted one cell
diagonally, say down and to the right,... "



Figure 1: The three transition rules defining 'Life' are (1) a cell with two or three live
neighbours stays alive, (2) a cell with less than two or more than three live
neighbours dies, (3) a dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes alive; a
macrolaw defining a 'glider' can be just 'move one cell down and one right'.
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A glider is an emergent pattern demonstrating nicely the most important
properties of emergence described above. First, it is a result of repeating
interactions between components interconnected to form an array. Second, its
behaviour cannot be revealed by direct inspection of the rules satisfied by the
components. Third, it is a persistent pattern with changing components. And
fourth, it satisfies a macrolaw, which could be described simply as move
diagonally, without any reference to the original rules that produced a pattern.
These are the most important properties of emergent patterns, while some
other properties mentioned above become important when sufficient
populations of gliders inhabit the space.
2.2 Levels in Emergence
There is another important property of emergence that can be illustrated with
Life. Besides the glider many other persistent patterns were discovered in
this cellular automaton, among them also patterns that emit gliders and ones
that respond to a collision with a glider. It was soon realized that the glider
can be used as a signalling device while the other two can be used for
creating and receiving signals. With these basic components a complete
computing device was constructed within Conway's automaton.
Although this was not an emergent phenomenon, it demonstrated clearly that
persistent patterns at one level can serve as components for persistent
patterns at more complex levels. At each level persistent patterns satisfy their
own macrolaws, but they are completely constrained by the laws of the lower
level, just like the macrolaw for the glider is constrained by the basic rules
defining the automaton.
We are very familiar with this hierarchy of levels in other cases of emergent
patterns, like organisms for instance. Different molecules are organized in
several types of persistent patterns that serve as components for cells, these
serve as components for tissues, tissues serve as components for organs that
finally constitute an organism. Emergence offered a first glimpse of how these
hierarchical levels that we encounter everywhere could have evolved in the
universe we know.
Besides serving as components for patterns at a higher hierarchical level
persistent patterns of course also engage in interactions with other persistent
patterns at the same hierarchical level. We can again use the case of Life as
an illustration. One of the simplest patterns emitting gliders consists of two
patterns called the queen bee, which in the course of their collision produce
a glider and then return to their initial state. The interaction is quite
comparable to chemical reactions. None of the patterns serves the other one
in this interaction.
These kinds of interactions can sometimes help both patterns to enhance
their persistence. They can produce copies of the interacting patterns or
produce other patterns that stimulate the production of copies of interacting
patterns, for instance, so they can form autocatalytic loops or other
complementary relations between persistent patterns. This can have
important consequences for the development of the whole system. As Holland
notes (1998, page 227), the number of possible interactions, and therefore
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also the possible sophistication of response, rises extremely rapidly with the
increasing number of interacting persistent patterns. As autocatalytic loops
increase the populations of persistent patterns in the system, this greatly
enhances the possibility that higher-level persistent patterns will emerge.
To sum up, we have two types of relations between emergent patterns,
hierarchical ones between patterns at different levels of complexity, and
complementary or non-hierarchical ones between patterns on the same level.
2.3 Levels and Decision-making
The issue of levels and of relations between emergent patterns on different
levels leads to another issue that is of our primary interest. There is a direct
relation between hierarchical levels and decision-making, familiar to anyone
who ever worked in a hierarchical organization, and through decision-making
we can make also a point about emergent patterns in urban form.
Some patterns in urban form clearly evoke the impression that they emerged
without intention. There is in fact a whole discourse about spontaneous and
organic patterns in urban form. Yet, we could hardly convince anyone that a
building or a whole town sprang up spontaneously or that it self-organized.
As De Landa (1997, page 30) reminds us, the key to the apparent paradox is
that "the difference between self-organized and planned cities is not primarily
one of form, but of the decision-making process behind the genesis and
subsequent development of that form." He continues with specifying the
distinction between two types of decision-making giving form to cities: "That
is, the crucial distinction is between centralized and decentralized decision
making in urban development." There is a series of decisions underlying every
single process of building. When these decisions in the development of urban
form are centralized, performed by a governing body for instance, the
resulting form or pattern is typically planned, as Kostoff (1991) explains.
When decisions are decentralized, performed by people living on the land for
instance, the resulting urban form is typically spontaneous.
Decisions can be thought of as the outcomes of interactions between
emergent patterns. Centralized decision-making in De Landa's terms could be
Figure 2: A sequence of selected steps (1, 2, 9, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 31) from
'Life' displaying the collision between two patterns called 'queen bee', that
produces a 'glider' in the course of collision and then returns to its initial state.
None of the patterns serves the other one in this case, but once this sequence gets
used for producing 'gliders' it starts serving higher level patterns.
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translated into what we earlier called relations between emergent patterns on
different levels of complexity. When different levels are in question, the
decision will typically be taken by the emergent pattern at the higher
hierarchical level. Through evolution persistent emergent patterns at higher
levels learn to manage and manipulate lower level patterns within the
framework of constraints of lower level laws. We may recall here how
computation can be made through manipulation of simple emergent patterns
like the gliders in Conway's automaton.
On the other hand decentralized decision-making could be matched with
relations between emergent patterns at the same hierarchical level. Within the
same level decisions are typically a trade-off between interacting parties.
Relations here are usually of complementary nature and involve an exchange
of some material between two or more emergent patterns. Symbiotic relations
in ecosystems are one example, autocatalytic loops in chemistry are another
one and markets in societies are a third one.
As Kostoff (1991, page 44) emphasizes this dichotomy is only of limited
relevance because cities are always a mixture of both types of processes.
The two processes not only coexist but often interlock and the forms they
typically give rise to metamorphose from one into another. A similar remark is
made also by Watts (2003) regarding network structure of industrial
organizations. The ability of solving problems arising from an ambiguous
environment depends on the organization's ability to process information
efficiently. It turned out that the most effective network structure is what Watts
calls a multiscale network, which retains the levels of the hierarchy but
includes lots of bypass links on all levels. Although the connectedness is
higher closer to the top of the hierarchy, the overall organization is
nevertheless a mixture of both basic types of relations.
2.4 Modelling Emergence
From these last remarks concerning two types of complex emergent patterns
we can see that the real problem in understanding emergence is how to
extract from the whole only the relevant patterns and the relations among
them. Since we are unable to understand the whole world at once, we are
only able to concentrate on describing a selected aspect of the world, putting
aside other aspects as irrelevant or incidental. And this is what we do with
models. As Holland (1998, page 12) notes all science is in one sense based
on building models. After all, equations are models of some aspects of our
world. They enable us to derive consequences and make some predictions.
With computers models got another dimension. Computer-based models have
the abstraction of mathematical models as phenomena are represented with
numbers, but on the other hand these numbers are not represented with
symbols but actually calculated in every step of the model. Thus computer-
based models gain some features of an experiment. They can be started,
stopped, examined, and restarted under new conditions, all of which are
characteristics of empiricism rather than theory. In addition to that, computers
compute very fast, which enables us to explore models of previously
unimaginable complexity.
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Nevertheless speed alone cannot substitute for careful model-building. We
need to include just the relevant details in the model, because too many
details can obscure the picture. We also need to choose the right level and
according macrolaws defining the model. By selecting the relevant
components and the relations among them, we set up the rules that make
rule-based systems comprehensible. A well-conceived model will display the
complexity of the real phenomena and emergent patterns despite the fact that
many of the details are excluded.
3 MODELS OF URBAN FORM
Understanding the development of urban form almost inevitably involves
computer-based models. First, because it is very difficult if not impossible to
perform experiments on urban form in real life, at least for scientific reasons.
And second, because historical records and data are unreliable. As urban
form changes very slowly, we usually need the data on a comparable basis
for a pretty distant past to get a meaningful time span. Besides, social or
economic circumstances often change faster than patterns in urban form,
which makes comparable analysis even more difficult. Still, as Kostoff (1991)
has shown, historical records can tell us a great deal.
But historical records can be of little help when we try to understand how
complex emergent patterns come into existence from the interaction of
simpler ones. As De Landa (1997, page 17) explains "emergent properties
belong to the interaction between parts, so it follows that a top-down analytical
approach that begins with the whole and dissects it into its constituent parts,
is bound to miss precisely those properties." Another consideration also has
to be made with regard to historical approach. Looking back in time usually
leads us to intuitive conclusions that the consequent development was
somehow inevitable. "History, in other words, has a tendency to ignore the
things that might have happened." (Watts, 2003, page 245)
Considering what was said above, it is somehow surprising that models of
urban form are in fact not very common. For model-building reasons that we
discussed previously, many of the models dealing with urban phenomena
exclude urban form as irrelevant or incidental. Models in urban economics, for
instance, treat space as a completely abstract featureless entity, because
including the form of space would obstruct the explanation about the
distribution of activities in space. Models of social phenomena operate in the
same way or else take urban form as a given. Also transportation models that
model transport flows take the form of transportation infrastructure typically as
a given, because it changes much slower than the flows themselves.
What makes an overview of the models of urban form difficult is also the fact
that, when trying to understand the relation among its different scales as we
do, it involves several fields of study from architecture through urban design
and urban planning to regional and spatial planning. And since the modelling
of urban form is not a central issue in any of these fields, there's a lack of
overarching views similar to the one made by Batty and Longley (1994) in
their book "Fractal Cities" of the then rather fresh field.
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3.1 Relevant Features of Urban Form
Considering the importance of model-building for the topic of our interest, we
have to discuss briefly what the relevant features of urban form that should be
included in the models are. This is also important to explain our particular
choice of models.
First of all, urban form or the physical built structure should be considered as
a distinct entity. We should be well aware that there are many processes
behind its genesis and subsequent development, but once it comes into
existence it begins its own life, defined by its own macrolaws. In fact urban
form is itself an emergent pattern that evolved at some stage in history from
the interactions of some other persistent emergent patterns in human
societies. Elements of urban form that should be considered as components
in the model depend of course on the level of observation. What is important
is that these components satisfy their own distinct macrolaws.
Second, relations among components in the model should be taken into
account. Here it is important to consider how elements of urban form actually
interact at different scales. Most of the interactions involve the exchange of
matter and information by people, for instance. It is therefore very important to
consider interaction through circulation networks like roads or the like. But
circulation networks often present a separate element of urban form with its
own laws of behaviour, so it is at some levels necessary to model separately
the development of circulation networks and of the urban form of buildings,
because they constrain each others development.
What follows is a brief overview of some models of urban form that we
considered relevant. What we were looking for in models are properties of
emergent patterns discussed in the previous section. A selection is restricted
to only a few examples so it may be critically incomplete, and there may be
also other models that we were not aware of. The idea was to cover as many
aspects and as many levels as possible with as few models as possible. The
order in which the models are presented tries to follow the emergence of
higher level patterns from lower level ones, although the selected models do
not necessarily reveal this kind of emergence.
3.2 Models
3.2.1 "Subdivision Generator"
This model is a part of the set of models developed by Erickson and Lloyd-
Jones (1997) to simulate the aggregation of settlements. The purpose of this
particular model was to illustrate the development of building complexes and
the influence they may have on subsequent urban form. According to the
authors it is in essence a shape grammar, a rule-based model defined by
initial shape and shape rules that transform it.
It models separately the circulation network and urban form of buildings.
While the rules for the former do not allow for much interaction between
components, the rules for urban form of buildings include several partly
interacting elements. The model first places a plot adjacent to any of the
movement cells, which are part of the circulation network. If the plot already
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exists, it places a house on a plot, and if the house already exists, it
extends it. The extension of the house then has many steps and in each step
one of the elements is added. These elements are the rooms (cells with
variable sizes to be placed on a plot on seven predefined locations),
perimeter walls, side pathways and rear pathways. The arrangement of
these elements on a plot is random, but the probability of certain features is
determined on a global scale of the model.
What is interesting in this model is that it starts with very basic units of urban
form, like rooms, and tries to demonstrate how they aggregate to form
settlements. Unfortunately too many parameters are defined on the global
level of the model and the components in the model are not interconnected
enough to form non-linear interactions among components. As a result no
patterns can be found that couldn't be revealed by inspection of the rules.
Nevertheless, one interesting outcome appears. When houses are still new,
rooms form separate buildings and distinct entities. But after several steps
rooms connect and it is getting more and more difficult to distinguish one
from another. In fact, after even more steps rooms amalgamate into a new
entity, which resembles strongly a courtyard house building typology.
Although the resulting form is expected from the rules, it is a fact that multi-
story houses in reality function differently from single cell houses and thus
probably satisfy their own macrolaws. It is possible that with slight
modification of rules the model could illustrate well the development of
different building typologies from simpler elements.

3.2.2 "Rhizome Simulation"
This model was developed by Testa et al. (2001) from Emergent Design
Group. Its purpose was not understanding the development of urban form but
primarily its design. Nevertheless it reveals some interesting features that may
be of use for our purpose as well.
The model tries to help designing a high-density multi-functional building
within an existing urban context, so the focus of the model is on the
distribution of elements with different functions within the bigger bounding
volume. Each element is spatially defined as a box with a given volume and
approximate dimensions (volume and dimensions can vary within predefined
limits) and for each element preferential relations towards other elements are
defined in a preference table. As elements are added one by one within the
Figure 3: Sample output showing plot development in the "Subdivision Generator"
(From Erickson & Lloyd-Jones, 1997)
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bounding volume, the program also tries to optimise their relations according
to the preference table. Once the first element is placed at a random position
adjacent to the perimeter of the bounding volume, it chooses its neighbouring
element, which then chooses the next neighbouring element etc.
Relations between elements are therefore non-linear and the resulting
configuration of elements cannot really be predicted by the inspection of the
rules. What is particularly interesting is perhaps not so much the emergent
pattern of elements in space but rather the pattern of the remaining space
within the bounding volume. As the authors emphasize, it can be considered
primarily as a circulation network connecting all the elements into a whole.
Internal circulation is in fact the main feature that distinguishes more complex
buildings from simple single-cell ones. This aspect is missing in a previous
model by Erickson and Lloyd-Jones. As this circulation network can develop
in many ways, evolving into hierarchical or non-hierarchical networks for
example, it defines the way buildings function. It is not evident though whether
the authors of this model performed any kind of analysis of the emerging
circulation network that might reveal eventual macrolaws defining its
development.
3.2.3 "Path Node Generator Model"
This is another model developed by Erickson and Lloyd-Jones (1997) in their
series of settlement aggregation models. The specific purpose of this one was
to model the development of settlement morphology. Like their previous one it
models in each step separately the circulation network and the urban form of
buildings, only in this model the emphasis is on the rules defining the
development of circulation network. As one of the purposes of the model was
also to avoid the formal rigidity of an orthogonal lattice, much of the
information defining the development of the circulation network is stored
locally in cells so the model acquires some characteristics of the agent-
based approach.
In each step a new movement cell and new built form cells are added to the
system. The model starts with existing road (in fact, this road is also
generated as part of the initial conditions) on which some attraction points are
added as origins of growth. The movement cells are then added at random
with certain probability to grow perpendicularly to the existing road. Further
movement cells attach to their parent cells in the same direction but again
with certain probability to be added perpendicularly to them. To the
movement cells built form cells are added on the side. If two movement
cells meet, they merge. A certain irregularity (up to 5) is allowed to the
direction of the movement cells in this model, which results in an irregular
final outcome. Although most rules are set locally, few rules are defined also
on the global level of the model. One of these is defining the average density
of the pattern, which is set as the ratio between the number of built form cells
and the number of movement cells added in each step.
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The relations between components in this model are to some extent non-
linear mostly because the developments of circulation network and urban form
of buildings constrain each other. Thus we are getting some unexpected
results that cannot be predicted by inspecting the rules themselves. Not only
is the pattern on the whole to some extent unexpected, but probably the most
interesting outcome occurs when the density parameter is changed. It does
not change only the density but also the structure of the pattern, so the
circulation network changes from non-hierarchical to hierarchical when the
density parameter increases, for instance. This can also be considered a kind
of a macrolaw.
3.2.4 "Model of Growth of an Urban Cluster"
In this model developed by Semboloni (2000), the growth and development of
an urban cluster is described through the interactions between land use cells
and roads that connect them. Although both systems are interconnected their
development is governed by separate rules.
In essence a model is a pure cellular automaton although the space is divided
into irregular polygonal cells using a tesselation, instead of a more typical
orthogonal division. Land use cells are defined by four states and five
transition functions. To allow more complex and realistic interaction rules each
cell has three neighbourhoods, one that comprises only neighbouring cells,
another that includes also their immediate neighbours and yet another one
that includes all built cells. One interesting feature of the model is also that
cells can divide under certain conditions. Semboloni (2000) offers a short
description of the growth process: "Initially ... cells and roads affect the
division process in the surrounding cells, but once this process has occurred
then building potentialities increase. When this potentiality reaches a sufficient
level, the cell begins its building stage. As soon as a sufficient number of cells
have been built and a minimum demand for services is present, then a
services cell is created. These services cells in turn contribute to the creation
of new roads thereby affecting the process of division as well as that of
building." As part of the initial conditions, one cell is declared built and links
connecting it to neighbouring cells represent initial roads.
Figure 4: Sample output of the "Path Node Generator Model" when the density
parameter is changed from one (A) to two (B) 'built form cells' per one 'movement
cell'. (From Erickson & Lloyd-Jones, 1997)
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From the description of the growth process, it is evident that rules allow for
non-linear interactions resulting in emerging patterns that cannot be predicted
by the inspection of the rules alone. To quantify the results of the model, a
series of tests were performed which revealed also a number of macrolaws
defining the development of the cluster. The total number of built cells
increases with a power law function, for instance. It has to be emphasized that
the model of Semboloni is the only one among the presented models where
the emergent pattern actually consists of the changing components, which
was one of the properties of emergent patterns described by Holland (1998),
as built cells return to the unbuilt after a certain number of steps.
3.2.5 "Correlated Percolation Model"
This model, developed by Makse et al. (1998), is trying to describe the
development of urban systems on the basis of the familiar assumption that
development attracts further development in real cities. "In urban settings,
development units do not attach themselves randomly to an existing cluster.
Their placement is strongly influenced by the presence of other units. When a
unit occupies a certain location, the probability of additional development is
highest in its vicinity, and this probability decreases at a certain rate as the
distance from the unit increases." (Makse et al., 1998) The state of a given
site thus depends on the state of many other sites. The model also takes into
account the fact that population density decreases with the distance from the
centre in traditional cities and models it simply as an underlying density
gradient, decreasing gradually with the distance from the central business
district. The method for modelling correlations between units is borrowed from
physics and the theory of percolation.
Later on the authors perform qualitative tests to validate the results of the
model. Among other things they check the area distribution of connected
clusters of development units in the model with the known area distributions
of systems of cities. The results show a remarkable resemblance with real
Figure 5: Generation of 'cells' and 'roads'; the central zone of the cell cluster after
60 and 160 steps. Nodes of 'unbuilt cells' are presented as empty circles, nodes of
'built cells' are filled circles, lines connecting nodes are links of the planar graph
and thick lines represent 'roads'. (From Semboloni, 2000)
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data and correspond well to the familiar Zipf's law or the rank-size rule for
cities. This is clearly a macrolaw satisfied by the pattern as a whole. Also, the
pattern could not really be predicted by the inspection of the rules of the
model. Besides the area distribution of connected clusters, resembling
satellite towns encircling a metropolitan area, it is interesting also how holes
form within connected clusters that resemble the way in which large parks
form in real cities.
The results of the model might be even more interesting if the density
gradient, which is in this model defined on the level of the system as a whole,
was replaced by some relations concerning the simultaneous development of
urban form of buildings and circulation networks. As Lu and Tang (2004) have
shown for instance, there's a stable relation between the size of the city and
the patterns of some circulation networks.
3.3 Recapitulation
As we can see, some models succeed in producing emergent patterns
resulting from the non-linear interactions between components. In some
cases macrolaws defining the behaviour of these emergent patterns were
revealed as well and in the last two cases these macrolaws also correspond
well to the observed laws determining the development of real urban form.
It cannot be said that the models reveal clearly how complex emergent
patterns form from simpler ones and how levels of hierarchy emerge in urban
form as all models deal with one level only. Still, we can get a hint about this
when we consider emergent patterns of one model as components in another
one. Building complexes from the "Subdivision Generator" can be considered
as built form cells in the "Path Node Generator Model" or as development
units in "Correlated Percolation Model". Similarly, emergent settlements in
"Path Node Generator Model" could be built cells in the "Model of Growth of
an Urban Cluster". It is interesting that no model started with the very basic
elements of built form, like walls and floors and let the spaces with specific
functions or rooms emerge from the rules.
Concerning decision-making and levels of emergence, it may not be evident
immediately how different types of relations between emergent patterns
manifest themselves in the presented models. It is clear that the local rules
defining relations among components represent the relations between
emergent patterns at the same hierarchical level, but there are also rules that
Figure 6: Dinamical urban simulations of the "Correlated Percolation Model". The
correlation exponent is fixed for strong correlations in this case (From Makse et al.,
1998)
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mimic the effect of the hierarchical relations of higher level emergent patterns
towards lower ones. These are the rules that are defined at the global level of
each model.
Another issue has arisen when we described the "Model of Growth of an
Urban Cluster". Only in this model is the emergent pattern actually a
persistent pattern with changing components, while in other models
components remain fixed. This is the down side of these models, as they only
model growth, but ignore the decay of urban form as irrelevant. Patterns in
real urban form are actually changing much more than it is usually
considered. Cities remain where they have been for millennia although no
single building has remained in place for that long. Streets stay where they
were centuries ago, although almost all the buildings along them have been
rebuilt several times. Even single buildings are constantly renovated and few
components actually stay in place from the beginning.
4 Conclusions
We can conclude that with the help of computer models it is possible to reveal
at least some emergent patterns in urban form and how they come into
existence. On the other hand the exact picture of how different hierarchical
levels of emergent patterns form in cities is in the phase of a rough sketch at
the moment.
Nevertheless, the existence of emergent patterns in urban form opens some
issues for urban and spatial planning. We believe that revealing the crucial
emergent patterns, their relation to other emergent patterns in urban form,
their position in the hierarchy of levels and macrolaws defining their behaviour
would greatly enhance our ability to manage the development of urban form. It
is important to note that we can effectively manage only the patterns one level
lower to the one we want to influence, for instance. It is also important to know
what kind of influences are possible at certain level.
Another issue brought up through emergence is the issue of true novelty in
urban form. As Holland (1998) notes, it is only through the interactions
between emergent patterns that truly novel patterns can form. It is therefore
very important to let as many interactions as possible to take place. But first
we have to understand the nature of interactions in urban form. On the basis
of the models that we discussed above and of course the research in real
urban form (Jacobs, 1961; Hillier and Hanson, 1984) we can say that the most
important interactions are the ones between urban form of buildings and form
of circulation networks.

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