Using Cellular Automaton to Simulate Urban Expansion in Changchun, China

Abstract

Urban expansion is a complex spatial transformation process over time. It converts various land-use types into urban lands, therefore gradually increase the size of urban areas. The research in simulation and prediction of urban expansion can provide us with two benefits: one, we would be able to grasp the pattern of the complex process of a city's expansion; and the other, we may be able to foresee a possible problem that may occur during expansion, and deal with it ahead of time to create the best suitable plan for the city's structure and layout. In our experiment, we designed a Visual Basic (VB) program, and applied binding conditions and random factors to simulate the process of urban expansion using Cellular Automaton (CA) as a model. This experiment was based on selected previous research, and used the city of Changchun as an example. Our results indicate that it is feasible to model urban expansion with the sprawling process of CA.

Keywords

• Cellular automata
• Urban expansion
• Transition rules
• The rules of urban sprawl
• Simulation.