Model-theory interaction in urban planning: A critical review

More than half a century has passed since the first use of models in urban planning. Most urban planners have agreed on using models either to simplify complicated systems or to make simulations of such systems in order to predict their future. There is, however, disagreement on how far such simplifications and simulations have worked toward the planners’ goals and objectives. In this paper, through historical analysis, we placed the model-theory interaction into the broader scope of scientific modeling to develop guidelines applicable to the narrow field of urban modeling. Here, we developed an argument that models’ applicability and meaningfulness in urban planning are primarily dependent on planning theories, that is, models and theories should move parallel to achieve all the functions and capabilities claimed by models. Thus, an interactive process shapes the model as the mediator between the theory and the phenomenon: (a) the theory explains an abstract phenomenon, (b) the model provides an understanding of that phenomenon, and (c) the original abstract explanation is revisited and made more practical. This evolutionary process is our view of the “mediator model,” that is, a new definition of the urban model.