GIS-based urban modelling: practices, problems, and prospects

This paper reviews the practices, problems, and prospects of GIS-based urban modelling. The author argues that current stand-alone and various loose/tight coupling approaches for GIS-based urban modelling are essentially technology-driven without adequate justification and verification for the urban models being implemented. The absolute view of space and time embodied in the current generation of GIS also imposes constraints on the type of new urban models that can be developed. By reframing the future research agenda from a geographical information science (GISci) perspective, the author contends that the integration of urban modelling with GIS must proceed with the development of new models for the informational cities, the incorporation of multi-dimensional concepts of space and time in GIS, and the further extension of the feature-based model to implement these new urban models and spatial-temporal concepts according to the emerging interoperable paradigm. GISci-based urban modelling will not only espouse new computational models and implementation strategies that are computing platform independent but also liberate us from the constraints of existing urban models and the rigid spatial-temporal framework embedded in the current generation of GIS, and enable us to think above and beyond the technical issues that have occupied us during the past ten years.