ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to describe and reflect upon the emergence of fractal measurement and simulation of geographical structures. There is now a very wide range of basic introductions to fractal geometry, and it is not the intention here to revisit in detail the basic concepts of scale dependency and self-similarity and their application to real world objects: for a good introduction to this field see, for example, Peitgen et al. (1992). Rather, in the spirit of a research-oriented text-book, we will focus upon the application of fractal concepts to the modelling and simulation of social systems, with specific reference to the achievements and limitations of a ten-year-long project in which the author has been centrally involved. This is the ‘fractal cities’ project (Batty and Longley, 1994) which has counterparts in the urban modelling and dynamics literatures of a number of countries (e.g. Frankhauser, 1993; Pumain et al., 1989). More generally, however, we will reflect upon some of the ways in which digital geographical data may be assembled and used in quantitative urban analysis. As such, this chapter is about GeoComputation (GC) in that it consolidates a range of experiences in the development of digital statistical, analogue and computational models of urban systems. However, it differs in approach from some of the other contributions to this volume in that it is less about the ‘power’ of computing in the sense of intensive numerical processing, and more about the use of emergent digital technologies and digital datasets to depict and analyse the shape and form of urban settlements. There is also a specific substantive emphasis upon the form and functioning of urban systems. Here we will emphasize the development of data-rich representations of realworld systems using measures that have been developed within conventional urban geography, or are analogous to them. This work should also be seen as arguing for a return in urban geography to the measurement of physical and socio-economic distributions within cities, as a prerequisite to improved theorising about the form and functioning of urban systems.
