Rethinking progress in urban analysis and modeling: models, metaphors, and meaning - Urban Remote Sensing: Monitoring, Synthesis and Modeling in the Urban Environment - page 353

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Rethinking progress in urban analysis
andmodeling: models, metaphors,
andmeaning
Daniel Z. Sui
It has been well said that analogies may help one into the saddle, but are encumbrances
on a long journey .
A. Marshall
Previous assessment on urban analysis and modeling efforts has concentrated primarily on technical and
methodological details without probing the underlying root metaphors embedded in the diverse modeling efforts.
This chapter presents a comprehensive review of four major traditions in urban modeling during the past 50
years - spatial morphology, social physics, social biology, and spatial events. Using Pepper's world hypotheses as a
guiding framework, this chapter argues that the root metaphors embedded in the four urban modeling traditions
correspond to those in Pepper's world hypotheses - the world as forms, machines, organism, and arenas. It is argued
that what we traditionally regard as progress is, in fact, a shift of metaphors used for conceptualizing cities. In this
context, what we must recognize is the process whereby meaning is produced from metaphor to metaphor, rather
than, as it was often assumed by urban modelers, between model and the world. We need not only to check the
validity of our models from the technical perspective in terms of data accuracy and consistency with empirical
results, but also to scrutinize the driving conceptual metaphors deeply embedded in the models. Only then can we
weave the insights gained from the urban modeling efforts with other urban narratives to have a more sensible
urban future.