PHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC MODELING FOR TRANSPORTATION PLANNING. PART I: INTERACTION BETWEEN URBAN CENTERS AS A POTENTIAL PROCESS

The objective of this research is to make use of a physically based social system model to study the determinants of city sizes and their interactions in a nation. In particular, it was required that attention be paid to how new transportation systems affect city sizes. In this first part of a final report, the character of the distribution function for settlements of man is investigated. The distribution for weakly interacting settlements (early man as hunter gatherer) is developed and experimentally tested against historical data. The distribution function for interacting settlements (since agricultural settlements) - Zipf's law - is then treated, first as a pure information theoretic, namely as a communicational living language, and then as a communicational language for communities of man loosely bound to the earth. To keep the ensemble alive, the need for good cheap transportation among a significant mobile fraction of the population is discussed.

• Corporate Authors:

  General Technical Services, Incorporated

  Upper Darby, PA  United States 

  Transportation Systems Center

  55 Broadway, Kendall Square
  Cambridge, MA  United States  02142
• Authors:
  • Iberall, A S
  • Cardon, S Z
• Publication Date: 1977-9

Media Info

• Pagination: 48 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: City planning; Mathematical models; Social change; Statistical analysis; Urban areas; Urban transportation
• Uncontrolled Terms: Interaction
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00167353
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Technical Information Service
• Report/Paper Numbers: DOT-TSC-OST-77-37.I
• Contract Numbers: DOT-TSC-1157
• Files: NTIS, TRIS
• Created Date: Dec 8 2002 12:00AM