Department of Geography colloquium, in conjunction with the School of Planning and the Decision Center for a Desert City

Thursday, February 9, 2006
ASU Decision Center for a Desert City
Orchid House at 21 East 6th Street, Suite 126B
1:45 to 2:45

"3D Tel Aviv Dynamics"

Prof. Daniel Czamanski, City and Regional Planning, Technion Institute of Technology, Israel, Director of the City Complexity Research Lab, and Chairman of Czamanski Ben Shahar and Co.

The evolution of urban spatial morphology is discontinuous in space and non-uniform in time. As a result, precise descriptions are elusive. In a series of previous papers we depicted, analyzed, and endowed with at least partial explanations, the dynamics of the Tel Aviv morphology based exclusively on historic 2D data of urban footprints and on socio-economic time series and cross-sections data. In this paper we begin to depict and analyze the spatial and temporal processes of the Tel Aviv 3D urban morphology.

To this end we present a rudimentary 3D cellular automaton simulation model in which the city's shape is referenced by means of temporal changes in the volume of buildings, height distribution of buildings and their spatial distribution. The model uses a 2-D grid. The objects in the cells are the buildings that have variable height. Each of these cells has a neighborhood of eight cells, called "Moore's neighborhood". The model describes a city growing from flat with zero average height to one with agglomerations of skyscrapers. In the heart of the model there are four parameters: Initial building share, Inertia, interaction with neighbors and noise. Those parameters are very similar to the matching parameters in Batty [1998].

The simulations are carried out using Starlogo software, and experiments are conducted with systematic variation of the four parameters. The results indicate that cities can experience different path growths. Cities can be in convergence path or in divergence course and this depends on the setting of the parameters in the model. Very interesting evidence is the existence of a sharp borderline between the two zones of path settings. The model also supports changing the values of parameters in time; those changes in conditions reveal that in the synthetic environment of this lab, cities can change their behavior drastically and even experience phase transitions.

Prof. Czamanski has three degrees in economics. He was a faculty member at the Ohio State University. Currently, he teaches economics in the city and regional planning program and serves as the head of the economics of architecture and building specialization at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. He is the director of the city complexity research lab. He has published a number of books and tens of academic papers. In the past, Czamanski served as advisor to three ministers of energy in Israel and was the head of a task force concerning the re-organization of Israel Electricity Corp. During 2003-2005 he was the senior vice president for research at the Canadian Energy Research Institute. Czamanski is chairman of Czamanski Ben Shahar and Co. the leading consulting firm in real-estate economics in Israel. For 10 years, Czamanski served as chairman of the Haifa Center for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship. He was member of the education committee of the Small Business Administration, of the board of Israel Junior Achievement and deputy chair of the Haifa-Boston Partnership.

During the last five years he was chair of the economics subcommittees of Co-operation North, a cross-border economic development effort in Palestine and Israel, and of Border Regimes project. Currently, he serves as senior fellow at the Economic Cooperation Foundation and leads the Israeli side of the economic cooperation and economic development teams with the Palestinians.