Transient Dynamics and Scaling Phenomena in Urban Growth

Urban centers present all over the world striking similarities which translate into universal laws describing their growth and morphology. In this paper, we study a simple 2-dimensional cellular automata model containing what we identfiy as essential ingredients in the dimographic change. the slow addition of population to an initially empty area (mimicking migration) added with a reaction-diffusion process (representing reorganization of the population) allows us to recover many real data and provide us with a better understanding of the main processes forming and shaping the modern metropolis. <p> <p> Submitted to Fractals.