Mapping and tracking the evolution of a city

Dr Kiril Stanilov, a Marie Curie research fellow at UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) is developing a historical model of urban growth to explore the evolution of London. The model will be used to investigate the forces shaping the emergence and evolution of London's metropolitan form. The results so far raise questions about common assumptions such as the sprawl of London in the interwar period and the role of the car in determining post-war growth patterns. The model points to a remarkable constancy of spatial relationships over different historical periods and highlights the importance of pre-urban land use, land ownership patterns and infrastructure as a framework to determine future urban growth patterns. Using a map from 1875, the model predicts with a surprising level of accuracy the patterns of development in West London for the following 130 years. Dr Stanilov said: 'My interest is in using modelling as a tool to understand the physical evolution of cities and the dynamic patterns of their growth and urban form transformations. Most of my research has been centred on the morphology of cities in the US and Eastern Europe, so a study of London was not really on my to-do list but this all changed when I came across the amazing historical maps done by the Ordnance Survey.