Berlin 2018 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 64: Traffic Dynamics, Urban and Regional Systems (joint session SOE/DY)

DY 64.1: Talk

Thursday, March 15, 2018, 15:00–15:15, MA 001

A planar growing network model for urban street network evolution — •Oliver Weisse and Reik V. Donner — Potsdam Insitute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany

Historically grown cities can be at least partially understood as the result of self-organization principles without central planning authority. In order to understand the associated spatial settlement patterns, it is convenient to analyze the associated urban road networks providing the backbone of such cities. Recent work has demonstrated that the topological and geometric properties of such networks exhibit a surprising degree of universality, suggesting that the corresponding structure formation has been governed by relatively general principles.

Here, we propose an evolving planar network model based on a small set of simple rules that model stochastic network growth under local optimization of construction costs and travel efficiency. Specifically, we assume that the growth of cities follows a probability distribution of nodes in a two-dimensional Euclidean space with higher probability in areas where infrastructure already exists. In contrast to other existing models of urban road networks, this growth is recursive and depends on the existing city. Nevertheless, the geometric characteristics of the generated planar networks are statistically similar for sufficiently large cities, implying that they are largely independent of the specific evolution path. Moreover, the observed properties agree well with those of real-world cities.