'Cellular Automata' City

Paul Coates took 'The Game of life' concept further when applying it to the design rather than natural evolution of the built environment. He has enabled the user to change the input to suit their own requirements. His design ‘Cellular Automata’ uses 4 states of pixel, the unbuilt state, a road, house and a garden. It follows 5 rules similar to 'The game of life'. For example :

“‘If a cell is empty and there is at least one road cell and less than two
garden cells among four bordering cells, then make the cell a road, with 50%
probability, otherwise a house’”. P188 Marshall, Stephen, Cities Design & evolution

The rules are complex enabling results that are something that can be recognised as urban.The user can input specific reference points described as “a scatter of ‘seed’ locations” P189, Marshall, Stephen, Cities Design & evolution, density of the site and road ratio to the rest of the area.

This concept could be developed further allowing the public or non-urban designers to produce complex plans created through inputting specific criteria to the area. Also with the changing of specific criteria such as local planning policy variations of designs or outcome probabilities it could be further developed as required.

Paul Coates 'Cellular Automata'