Adapting principles of developmental biology and agent-based modelling for automated urban residential layout design

The objective is to automate the design of residential layouts as an aid for planners dealing with complex situations. The algorithm COmputational Urban Layout Design, applied to sites with various shapes, is guided by the goal of many mutually accessible residences and can be set to generate orthogonal or irregular road layouts. Using biological principles of genomic equivalence, conditional differentiation and induction, it grows from an embryonic ‘adaptive cell’ into a plan. Cells are ‘genetically identical’ with full development potential and can simultaneously lay roads and residential lots, using the gene set to change cell expression and adapt to local contexts. Cells can be seen as self-propagating agents that sort out their dependencies through local interactions.

When COmputational Urban LayoutDesign is set to grow a non-orthogonal layout, the plan has winding roads and irregular residential lots. Such a plan achieves the objective of relatively high residential density and accessibility, leading to walkable and coherent communities.