Geocomputation has come of age. The whirlwind of change experienced in Geographical Information Science (GIS) - developments in IT, and new data gathering and earth observing technologies - has taken GIS beyond mere data and towards its analysis, modeling, and use in problem solving. Geocomputation is now at the dynamic edge of this revolution. Bringing together the leading researchers in geocomputation, this volume provides an up-to-date overview of the development of new artificial intelligence principles and technologies (NN, CA, Multi-agent Systems and Evolutionary Algorithms) used for the analysis, development and evaluation of urban planning policies and programmes. Charting the new approaches to data-processing, the book provides pointers on how to harness these technologies, advancing the knowledge level of planning by multiplying the information capacity of GIS, and offering a new approach to territorial modeling and micro-scale descriptions of socio-economic, behavioural and micro-spatial theories of urban processes and land use change.

Planning This book stems from a Research Project financed by the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research (MIUR) which has been carried out in the period 1999-2002. The Project, entitled Knowledge Engineering in Planning Process was aimed at developing Artificial Intelligent technologies in analysis, project and evaluation in territorial planning. This approach, which has recently been defined Geocomputation in the scientific literature, constitutes an emerging paradigm in territorial sciences. The final research results were presented in a workshop which took place in Milan in November 2001. In addition to the parties of the project, the meeting hosted speakers internationally well known as the cutting edge of researchers in the field. Among them: Mike Batty (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA)-UCL- London), Dino Borri (Polytechnic of Bari), Chris Webster (Cardiff University), Kai Nagel (Computer Science Institut- Zurich), Katerina Hlavackova-Schindler (Vienna University of Economic and Business Administration), Lena Sanders - CNRS, Paris, Paul Torrence CASA-UCL London. The book collects the proceedings of this concluding workshop.

The housing market, like every market, is the product of thousands of interacting buyers and sellers driven by different interests. But unlike other markets, the housing market is able to profoundly transform the socioeconomic structure and the image of a city. Very often, changes in urban space are the result of the imperceptible operation of a multitude of micro-transformations which act with such great energy and decisiveness that they can transform the 'DNA' of entire urban neighborhoods. These qualitative novelties, unpredictable and non-deducible on the basis of the previous properties, are defined emergences. Namely emergence means a 'pattern formation' characterized by a self-organizing process driven by non-linear dynamics. This book explores housing market emergence in light of three different phenomena: search for housing, social polarization, and gentrification. The book is divided into two parts. The first part presents contributions on modelling emergence of different phenomena, formalised in multi-agent systems. The second part gathers empirical research and analyses aimed at supporting the findings of the models.

The housing market, like every market, is the product of thousands of interacting buyers and sellers driven by different interests. But unlike other markets, the housing market is able to profoundly transform the socioeconomic structure and the image of a city. Very often, changes in urban space are the result of the imperceptible operation of a multitude of micro-transformations which act with such great energy and decisiveness that they can transform the 'DNA' of entire urban neighborhoods. These qualitative novelties, unpredictable and non-deducible on the basis of the previous properties, are defined emergences. Namely emergence means a 'pattern formation' characterized by a self-organizing process driven by non-linear dynamics. This book explores housing market emergence in light of three different phenomena: search for housing, social polarization, and gentrification. The book is divided into two parts. The first part presents contributions on modelling emergence of different phenomena, formalised in multi-agent systems. The second part gathers empirical research and analyses aimed at supporting the findings of the models.