Optimization and Control of the Urban Spatial Dynamics

Urban planning involves the assignment of land use to each land cell. This process coexists and may conflict with the complex self-organized dynamics of the urban system, which should be constrained by the plan. The purpose of this study is the identification of a method for attaining the planned goals through the utilization of the self-organized dynamics, and the minimization of the constraints. The paper is organized in three steps. First, the urban plan is defined as a process of optimization. Second, the set of optimal solutions is compared with the configurations resulting by the self-organized dynamics. Third, a method for the convergence of the self-organized dynamics with the optimal configuration is proposed. In conclusion, the study shows that planning a complex system may be a hard task, while the control and the utilization of the self-organized dynamics help in the attainment of a total utility.