Trois décennies de modélisation des systèmes de villes : sources d'inspiration, concepts, formalisations

Geographers have long privileged a systemic approach of cities. Following this approach, the interactions between cities represent the main driving force behind differentials in urban growth. During the last three decades, models of systems of cities are inspired from methods in physics and computing science. Concepts of self-organization and bifurcation associated to differential equations characterize a first field, concept of emergence and multi-agent systems a second one. The aim of this article is to analyze the relations between these two families of models. Some authors see a rupture when others, considering longer time periods, show continuity in the approaches of urban modeling. The spiral is suggested as a metaphor to describe advances in urban modeling during these three decades.