Modeling Urbanization by Accessibility in Rapid-Growth Areas

Abstract

This study aims to develop a model to analyze urbanization in rapid-growth areas according to time distances from multigravity centers and to simulate the level of urbanization (urban land ratio) by the variation of spatial opportunity of accessibility. The multigravity centers reflect the settlement system of center places, such as big cities, middle cities, and rural areas. The time distance by car travel was used to represent the accessibility. The spatial opportunity for attractiveness was calculated by a linear summation function that has the quantified values of multiple criteria and their weighting values as a type of distance-decay function. For the south area of Seoul, Republic of Korea, the model parameters were calibrated using data sets from 1985, 1990, and 1995 by the nonlinear optimization method, and the latter two data sets were used to verify the simulated values of the former two. The application results show high correlation between observed and simulated values.