ABSTRACT
Urban development is the result of a variety of factors, these being physical, socioeconomic, and institutional. Previous studies on urban modelling have addressed various aspects of urban development. However, most of these studies regard urban development as a binary process of non-urban to urban conversion conducted under the paradigm of the crisp set theory (Wu and Webster 2000; Clarke and Gaydos 1998; Wu 1998a,b,c, 1996; White and Engelen 1997, 1994, 1993). In fact, the process of urban development resembles a fuzzy process both spatially and temporally. Spatially, there is no sharp boundary between an urban built-up area, urban-rural fringe, and non-urban rural land. Temporally, urban development is a continuous process that can be illustrated using a logistic curve (Herbert and Thomas 1997; Jakobson and Prakash 1971).
