This is roughly what I'm trying to do in a newly funded project to construct a planning support system based partly on the SGCM.  We did an empirical validation of that model in Taipei, and it seems that the idea of the SGCM can be used to describe how cities work empirically.
 
Shih-Kung

Shih-Kung Lai
[log in to unmask]
http://www.rebe.ntpu.edu.tw/people/bio.php?PID=9

Professor (Urban and Regional Planning)
Department of Real Estate and Built Environment
Founding Director
International Program on Urban Governance
http://www.ntpu.edu.tw/ipug/
National Taipei University
151, University Road
San Shia District, New Taipei City, 23741
Taiwan, R. O. C.
Tel: +886-2-8674-1111 ext. 67417 or 67490
Fax: +886-2-8671-5308

Founding President: Chinese Association of Urban Management
http://www.urbanmanagement.org.tw
Co-founding Editor: Journal of Urban Management
http://www.jurbanman.com.tw

-----Original message-----
From:Chris Webster<[log in to unmask]>
To:COMPLEXITY-PLANNING<[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 10:45:35 +0100
Subject: Re: Variety of of institutions and urban resilience
Could a spatial Garbage Can model (see Shih-Kung Lai's paper in E&PB several years ago) be used to build a calibrated model of infrastructure or service provision in new neighbourhoods?
Chris

Chris Webster
BSc MSc Dip TP PhD DSc(Econ) FRSA
Professor of Urban Planning and Development, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University
Director, UK Centre for Education in the Built Environment



From:        Shih-Kung Lai <[log in to unmask]>
To:        [log in to unmask]
Date:        18/07/2012 23:29
Subject:        Re: Variety of of institutions and urban resilience
Sent by:        Complexity & Planning <[log in to unmask]>



My simulation of spatial garbage can model also implies that when structural constraints, reminiscent of institutions, are more flexible, more problems tend to be solved and the system, or a city, indeed becomes more resilient by regaining its total energy level more quickly over time.
 
Shih-Kung

Shih-Kung Lai
[log in to unmask]
http://www.rebe.ntpu.edu.tw/people/bio.php?PID=9

Professor (Urban and Regional Planning)
Department of Real Estate and Built Environment
Founding Director
International Program on Urban Governance
http://www.ntpu.edu.tw/ipug/
National Taipei University
151, University Road
San Shia District, New Taipei City, 23741
Taiwan, R. O. C.
Tel: +886-2-8674-1111 ext. 67417 or 67490
Fax: +886-2-8671-5308

Founding President: Chinese Association of Urban Management
http://www.urbanmanagement.org.tw
Co-founding Editor: Journal of Urban Management
http://www.jurbanman.com.tw

-----Original message-----
From:Chris Webster<[log in to unmask]>
To:COMPLEXITY-PLANNING<[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:58:07 +0100
Subject: Variety of of institutions and urban resilience
This is an intriguing idea that I have also often thought about. The idea of variety of institutions leading to economic resilience is analogous to the idea of competition in markets leading to economic efficiency. Competition drives out poor products and poor producers and poor production processes. Competition between institutions drives out poor laws, rules and procedures. There is also a link to the Schumpetarian idea of creative destruction - variety in institutions makes a city more resilient to downturns and renders the destruction of firms and institutions creative as new and better ones are permitted to arise.

It would be interesting to investigate the degree of variety of institutions governing selected urban services within a large city like Istanbul, or within a country or cross-nationally and to test the resilience hypothesis.

Chris



Chris Webster
BSc MSc Dip TP PhD DSc(Econ) FRSA
Professor of Urban Planning and Development, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University
Director, UK Centre for Education in the Built Environment



From:        Shih-Kung Lai <[log in to unmask]>
To:        [log in to unmask]
Date:        18/07/2012 13:24
Subject:        Re: a collective research agenda proposal from Ankara
Sent by:        Complexity & Planning <[log in to unmask]>




My hunch is that it might have to do with variety, in terms of institutional structure and transition rule of land change.  The more variety a city has, that is, more flexsible institutional structure and a larger number of transition rules of land change, the more likely people and services in that city would co-evolve to grow at the same time.  Of course, this guess is subject to rigorous investigation.
 
Shih-Kung

Shih-Kung Lai
[log in to unmask]
http://www.rebe.ntpu.edu.tw/people/bio.php?PID=9

Professor (Urban and Regional Planning)
Department of Real Estate and Built Environment
Founding Director
International Program on Urban Governance
http://www.ntpu.edu.tw/ipug/
National Taipei University
151, University Road
San Shia District, New Taipei City, 23741
Taiwan, R. O. C.
Tel: +886-2-8674-1111 ext. 67417 or 67490
Fax: +886-2-8671-5308

Founding President: Chinese Association of Urban Management
http://www.urbanmanagement.org.tw
Co-founding Editor: Journal of Urban Management
http://www.jurbanman.com.tw

-----Original message-----
From:Chris Webster<[log in to unmask]>
To:COMPLEXITY-PLANNING<[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2012 10:00:05 +0100
Subject: Re: a collective research agenda proposal from Ankara
Yes - clearly they co-evolve. The question posed is whether there are any general principles and rules governing that co-evolution. Simulation is no doubt an important part of the research agenda.
Chris

Chris Webster
BSc MSc Dip TP PhD DSc(Econ) FRSA
Professor of Urban Planning and Development, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University
Director, UK Centre for Education in the Built Environment



From:        Shih-Kung Lai <[log in to unmask]>
To:        [log in to unmask]
Date:        17/07/2012 07:13
Subject:        Re: a collective research agenda proposal from Ankara
Sent by:        Complexity & Planning <[log in to unmask]>





Could it be that the growths of people and services coevolve, just like the relationship between land use and transportation?  We have conducted simulations on land use and transportation co-evolution for a small town in Taiwan and they generated interesting results.

Shih-Kung

Shih-Kung Lai
[log in to unmask]
http://www.rebe.ntpu.edu.tw/people/bio.php?PID=9

Professor (Urban and Regional Planning)
Department of Real Estate and Built Environment
Founding Director
International Program on Urban Governance
(http://www.ntpu.edu.tw/ipug)
National Taipei University
151, University Road
San Shia District, New Taipei City, 23741
Taiwan, R. O. C.
Tel: +886-2-8674-1111 ext. 67417 or 67490
Fax: +886-2-8671-5308

Founding President: Chinese Association of Urban Management
http://www.urbanmanagement.org.tw
Co-founding Editor: Journal of Urban Management
http://www.jurbanman.com.tw

-----Original Message-----
From: Complexity & Planning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Webster
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 3:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: a collective research agenda proposal from Ankara

Having talked to a few complexity & planning scholars at the AESOP conference and also to some Turkish urban scholars researching complex planning issues I wondered if the former community might want to turn their attention (collectively or individually) to a particular complex problem faced by the latter. An issue that crops up time and time again in turkish planning  - as just about everywhere else where there is fast growth, sprawl and haphazard government control over urban development - is the timing and sequencing of population and services/infrastructure. There are two extreme outcomes:

1. People locate first, services follow
2. Services locate first, people follow

There is an equivalent problem and two extreme outcomes for (a) the fixed costs of urbanisation - ie hard infrastructure and (b) the variable costs ie urban services.

Between the two extremes are a range of hybrid outcomes, depending on prevailing market and governance dynamics, capital supply etc.

RESEARCH QUESTION: Can any general rules be constructed concerning this problem? For example, is the outcome less or more unpredictable (a) at different spatial scales (volumes of people)? (b) temporal scale (slow/fast urbanisation)? (c) with different kinds of feedback channels (clarity of market signals or degree of monopoly in the retail or education markets for example).

What can complexity science say about this central planning issue? Wouldn't it be good if members of this list and of the AESOP complexity group addressed themselves to bringing light to a classic urban planning problem and thus advancing the science of our profession?

Chris Webster