Rethinking Over Urban Modeling: A Theoretical View

Urban Planning like other sciences has been affected of the different thinking streams. Rethinking over urban modeling based on theoretical view is the gap in contemporary urban studies. More than half a century has passed since the first use of models in urban planning. Simultaneously, rethinking on modeling concept has been made in natural sciences which is why urban modeling needs to take this necessity into account. Through a historical analysis in the first section, the primary aim is to inform the reader about a debate on model-theory interaction. This debate concludes that without supportive theories, models are meaningless.

This paper focuses on the field of urban planning to figure out how the composition of Theory-Model has been shaped over the past decades.

This paper is a documentary research in Macro scale which stays away from applied researches.

This study offers some advices on how to make the model application successful, constructive and, above all, theoretically oriented more than it had been within the urban planning discipline and practice in the past. Also, through systematic literature review covering Deutsch’ work in 1951 until today, the paper theoretically studied urban modeling and periodically classified them.

Based on the critical review, we found that a new definition of urban models is needed to tie them to theories and phenomena. Furthermore, models are not tools in serve of theories anymore. In addition, papers’ results introduce urban modeling as an expertise rather than an instrumental skill.