Computerised 3D models are more intuitive and rich in landscape detail. They are considered an essential visualisation method for the presentation of environmental data with spatial contents. The 3D technology has been increasingly applied in environmental impact assessment (EIA) and urban...

Simulation models on urban land-use change help in understanding urban systems and assist in urban planning. One of the challenges of simulating urban regions in Europe as well as in North America or Japan is urban shrinkage, where deindustrialisation, massive population losses, and ageing cause...

Recent years have witnessed substantial advances in the precision and availability of digital infrastructure data, remote sensing data, and microscale socioeconomic data for urban areas in many parts of the world. However, these data still remain deficient in detail especially with respect to...

From the point of view of a situated observer, the physical shape of buildings creates spatial relationships only some of which are present in perception while others are inherent in abstract descriptions of the objective structure of environment retrieved in the mind. In this paper the...

The agglomeration patterns of twenty-six manufacturing and service sectors in and around Paris in 1999 are analysed. The method used measures the intensity of spatial agglomeration and identifies the location patterns of economic sectors. First the locational Gini coefficient and Moran’s I...

Having a neighbourhood open space that is attractive and easy to visit can benefit older people’s well-being. However, to date little research has explored the comparative importance of different attributes of local open space for older adults. This study drew on a sample of people from across...

We present in this paper the development and application of a cellular automata model that uses irregular cells for simulating land-use change instead of the common regular cells based on the pixels of remote sensing images. The use of irregular cells combines urban form with reliable...

In this paper the design and execution of a simple AutoLISP routine for generating a map of plan isovists (in the sense of Benedikt) are discussed. Such a plan field of isovists is a registration of visibility from multiple station points within and around a building. More precisely, the plan...

There is a paradoxical relationship between the density of solar housing and net household energy use. The amount of solar energy available per person decreases as density increases. At the same time, transportation energy, and to some extent, household operating energy decreases. Thus, an...