Downtown Dynamics

In urban analytics, ‘crowding’ implies the spatiotemporal distributional unevenness of people’s stays and flows in middle-scale urban spaces, and has since become an emerging keyword, attracting not only practical interests but  also research interests, especially in the current IoT devised downtown. This book presents a collection of papers on a series of exploratory studies on the rise and fall of downtowns (Downtown Dynamics), which the author’s group has been working on with the aim of constructing an artificial society that contributes to the planning and management of crowds by developing Agent-Based Social Simulation (ABSS). In particular, the book includes (1) an analysis of 20 years’ worth of survey data on visitors’ shopping-around behavior for Osu district in Nagoya city, as a representative Japanese downtown, (2) correlation analyses of spatial distributions between Visibility Graph Analysis (VGA) as a “visibility index” and crowding in middle scale urban spaces, (3) agent modeling of visitors’ shopping-around behavior and construction of the Downtown Dynamics Model as an artificial society, and (4) modeling of the vision-driven agent as a “crowd generator” and its applicability to spatial design and sign layout in urban spaces. The book also includes a novel research program derived from complexity system science that provides new approaches to Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), social simulation, regional sciences, geo-informatics, and urban planning studies for researchers and graduate students, as well as planning scientists and practitioners such as town managers and planners who are concerned with downtown revitalization. 

Downtown revitalization has become an important policy issue, especially in advanced countries. In the more than 50 years since Jane Jacobs’s critique, the mechanism of the formation and decline of downtowns has been the subject of much controversy. It has been argued that the agglomeration and attractiveness of downtown are supported by the internal diversity of downtown. However, because many controversies have remained in the discourse, few metrical analyses using operational system models based on survey data have been attempted. In this book, the authors identify the principle of the dynamics of downtown through microscopic re-interpretation of existing macroscopic spatial interaction models and meso-scale model construction from the microscopic point of view. Focusing especially on shop-around behaviors of downtown visitors as the key concept, the authors address (1) a rich trove of facts based on findings from a series of surveys conducted over more than a decade, (2) a review of existing shop-around behavior models and an exploration of a Downtown Dynamics model through gaming simulation, and (3) construction of a “boundedly-rational but intelligent” visitor agent model, development of ASSA (agent simulator of shop-around) visitors by such an intelligent agent-based approach, and implications of its simulation analyses. The book describes a research program to explore the mechanistic principle of Downtown Dynamics, especially the role of diversity that brings “co-evolution” both to visitors and to shop configuration in downtown areas. Included is a novel research program derived from complexity system science that provides approaches to researchers and graduates of spatial economy, regional sciences, geo-informatics, and urban planning studies as well as to planning officials and practitioners such as town managers and planners who are concerned with downtown revitalization.