Energetic mechanisms and development of an urban landscape system

Viewing urbanization as a change in the source and amount of energy flows from rural background to urban core provides a biophysical perspective of urban development. In this paper we begin by applying energetic principles to an urban setting and relating them to spatial hierarchy. Based on past research in urban energy theory and system modeling, we developed a spatial model to simulate the evolving spatial hierarchy of an urban system due to changing energy flows. Using an energy systems diagram, the spatial unit model consists of three interacting subsystems – natural area, agricultural area and urban area – representing a simplified entity or unit model of each grid element within a city-region. The Taipei metropolitan region is used as an example and is divided into grids of 1 km × 1 km to reveal the spatial heterogeneity of the urban landscape system. The spatial simulation was performed using geographical information system (GIS) and the model results show an increase in the urban energy hierarchy and reveal a pattern of spatial convergence. The energetic mechanisms of the evolving spatial hierarchy of the urban landscape system are discussed.