There exists a vital need to increase our understanding of the fast-growing informal settlements (IS) within the burgeoning mega cities of the less developed countries. Previous attempts have used descriptive speculation about underlying social, political and cultural forces, but they have not generated sufficient understanding to underpin useful and effective management policies. The result has been the piecemeal application of planning procedures and IS policies that were developed elsewhere, in developed nations. This thesis explains why such methods tend not to work within developing countries. Nevertheless, recent progress in studies of complex urban systems conducted in developed countries, combined with the power of modern computer simulations, facilitates new insight into the dynamics of developing nations ’ IS. Accordingly, this research utilises a cellular automata model, which is formally joined to a Geographic Information System (GIS), to better simulate the spread of informal settlements in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Similar approaches have been used, in part, to model the spread of planne
