ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the intra-urban model developed in the previous chapters is made more like the case of Brussels. In particular, all the perceived ‘distances’ and decisions concerning residential location, shopping destinations etc. are all made along transportation networks, which were based on those that are present in Brussels. What we were trying to achieve was to see whether the qualitative evolution of Brussels could be understood and ‘recaptured’ by our model. If this was possible, then it implied that the model contained the ‘reasons’ why the structure of Brussels was as it was, and therefore perhaps the limits to the stability of this structure. In which case it would also contain an idea of alternative future structures that might evolve under different possible policies, investment decisions and changing scenarios of in and out migration. The point here is of course, that whatever the shortcomings of our application, nevertheless, the other ‘operational’ methods used for decision making concerning transportation, land-use planning etc. simply do not address the real dynamic impacts at all. It seems better to explore the effects of causal linkages on the medium and long term evolution of the system even if this is done in a fairly simple way, than to use methods which ignore the whole issue completely, but give an appearance of great precision as a result of their high degree of ‘disaggregation’.
