ABSTRACT
Today’s urban settlement structures are developing and changing at a faster rate than ever before. Applied geographers and planners are frequently posed questions such as: What will be the effect upon the existing retail structure of a town of the development of a new out-of-centre grocery store? What might be the effects of renewal policies on house values in an urban area? How will the density of population across a city change if more central ‘brown-field’ sites are developed in preference to peripheral ones? And what would be the implications of either of these developments for non-car-based transport policy? Computer-based urban models and simulations provide answers to these and other important, explicitly geographical, questions.
