Built form and urban configuration development simulation

The “centrality/potential” model, proposed by Krafta (1994), for configurational development, aims at the simulation of inner city built form growth. This is generally achieved by simulating the uneven distribution of floor area increments, resulting from replacement of old buildings, considered “devalued capitali form new ones. The model considers two main variables - public urban space system and built form - and treats them unevenly, the former is extensively disaggregated whereas the latter is not. This feature enables the model to make just a rough account of intra-urban built form development. The issue of built form simulation is then taken further in the following way: a) Urban built form is disaggregated by types. Buildings are classified by a cross combination of scale, purpose, age and quality standard, b) The city is itself considered as a set of intertwined typologic cities. This means that each unit of public space is identified by its dominant built form type, producing a multilayered-discontinuous city. Each one has its own market characteristics: rentability, technological availability and demand size, c) The market constraints determine which layer-city has priority over the others, as well as each one's size of growth. References to rentability and demand size gives each built form type priorities for development d) Spatial conditions, in the form of particular evaluation of centrality and spatial opportunity measures, regulates the distribution of built form increments and typological succession. Locational values, denoted by centrality and spatial opportunity measures, area differently accounted for in each layer-city simulation. e) Simulation is obtained by “runningi the model recursively. Each built form type is simulated separately and in hyerarquical order, so that priority and replacement of built form types is acknowledged properly