22 research outputs found
Modeling urban street patterns
Urban streets patterns form planar networks whose empirical properties cannot
be accounted for by simple models such as regular grids or Voronoi
tesselations. Striking statistical regularities across different cities have
been recently empirically found, suggesting that a general and
details-independent mechanism may be in action. We propose a simple model based
on a local optimization process combined with ideas previously proposed in
studies of leaf pattern formation. The statistical properties of this model are
in good agreement with the observed empirical patterns. Our results thus
suggests that in the absence of a global design strategy, the evolution of many
different transportation networks indeed follow a simple universal mechanism.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, final version published in PR
Random Walks Along the Streets and Canals in Compact Cities: Spectral analysis, Dynamical Modularity, Information, and Statistical Mechanics
Different models of random walks on the dual graphs of compact urban
structures are considered. Analysis of access times between streets helps to
detect the city modularity. The statistical mechanics approach to the ensembles
of lazy random walkers is developed. The complexity of city modularity can be
measured by an information-like parameter which plays the role of an individual
fingerprint of {\it Genius loci}.
Global structural properties of a city can be characterized by the
thermodynamical parameters calculated in the random walks problem.Comment: 44 pages, 22 figures, 2 table