Extracting Urban Occupational Plans Using Cultural Algorithms [Application Notes]

Cultural Algorithms can be used to evolve structural functional models of urban centers. The population of the Cultural Algorithm is a set of urban planning agents, each of whom competes to build up a high level model of the site from a set of building blocks. These building blocks are produced through the use of techniques from Data Mining and Complex Systems. The best model is compared with existing models of modern cities in order to identify the similarities and differences between ancient and modern cities. The resultant comparison suggests that early Monte Albán exhibited a sector-based model that is characteristic of some modern cities. In addition, the plan generated by the Cultural Algorithm is able to add insight into the plan generated by a site expert. This suggests that such an approach can be generalized to other urban sites and foster a new understanding of the urbanization process.