Subject: Re: Community Modelling

From: [email-masked] (Petri Sakkinen)
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 1995 16:49:26 +0100

In article <[email-masked]>,
colette@.newhomes.demon.co.uk () wrote:

>I'm in the process of formulating a research proposal on 'The Use of
>Computer Simulation to Predict the Dynamics of Housing Communities'.
>My idea is to devise an application which will assess  the residents
>of  intentional communities, as a prelude to the design phase. 
>Their needs in terms of personality and lifestyle, will be allowed to
>influence the outcome of the community, by feeding into a CAD prog.
>and varying pre-determined parameters.

Steve, 

Sounds like a very worthwhile project! 

You might start by trying to find one of the about 100 sets of the
proceedings of '4th International Conference on Computers and Urban
Planning and Urban Management', which was held last week in Melbourne,
Australia. Some of the almost 100 papers were quite relevant ot your
situation. There were quite a few people from the UK down here: try
contacting planning and geography departments of some bigger universities
and if everything else fails, send me line. (The papers are supposed to
become available for ftp at Melbourne University, but that may take some
time.)  

Regards and good luck!

Petri 
Melbourne/Sydney, Australia 

PS Forget CAD (as it is normally understood), think GIS. (And when
thinking GIS, forget MapInfo, think vector. If I lost you, don't worry.
You'll see what I meant when you really get into it.) Some CAD-programs
can, however, act as the graphic end of a GIS: there are GIS add-ons for
AutoCAD and MicroStation, MiniCAD has a built-in database which can, with
some Pascal-programming (amateur level is enough) be used as a simple
mapping tool, not as a full GIS (topology virtually impossible to
implement). The key is, however, a good relational database. 

PPS Alternative housing or mainstream/commercial? 

PPPS Hairy-chested GIS-professionals may not take warm and fuzzy things
such as 'personality' or 'lifestyle' seriously. :-)