Brian Deal, Varkki Pallathucheril, Vladimir Cvetkovic
The city is the venue for very complex interactions among natural and human systems. A model, as an abstract representation of a real system (a real state or process), is an instrument that enables experimentation with, learning about, and finally understanding of the system of interest. It is particularly valuable when experimentation is not possible in the real world with the system of interest.Planning academics and professionals, dealing with the systems with one or more physical, social, economic, and environmental aspects, have employed a variety of models to understand the complexity and dynamics of planning issues, determine appropriate policy actions as well as timing of intervention and, ultimately, shape the desired future of our society.
This course will consider the challenges of modeling urban systems and interpreting modeling results. Students will review some of the models employed and widely used by the field of planning over the last several decades, and discuss how prospective planning scholars or practitioners can develop/use the models more effectively for analyses and research. It is expected that you will 1) have a solid understanding of not only the possible benefits but also the limitations of models and 2) get hands-on experience of designing/developing a model for a particular planning problem and deriving a set of applicable policies to address the problem.
