Self-organizing systems and the 'laws of socio-economic geography' (Q1072444)

An extension of the dynamic intra-urban model developed by the authors over recent years is presented. These improvements were carried out as part of a project to model the spatial evolution of Belgium, and this application is briefly discussed. However the main thrust of the paper is to show how our model generalizes many of the well known 'economic/geographic laws' concerning location, socio-economic structure and the decay with distance of spatial interactions. Indeed we show how the initially simple considerations, embodied in such laws, when put in a dynamic, nonlinear context of mutual interactions, lead through the self- organisation of the system to patterns characterized by anomalies and complexities of the real world. Perhaps in this way, our approach reveals the underlying regularities ('laws') of the system and at the same time the importance of time and evolution, in a proper understanding of the world around us.