ABSTRACT
Urban analysis in Japan, originating from a lecture in the Department of Urban Engineering (founded in 1962) at the University of Tokyo, was initiated as a study of analytical tools in city planning. In the planning process, a number of quantitative evaluations have to be made, such as the prediction of population, land use demand, mobility pattern, and urban facility capacity. Urban analysis was regarded as an academic field serving such a need. To develop the tools further, to more sophisticated ones in the academic sense, researchers in urban analysis sought theoretical backgrounds from other (purer) scientific fields, such as economics, operations research, psychology, spatial statistics, etc., to be applied to urban phenomena.
