Fractalopolis

This software application is dedicated to the design of multifractal urban or regional development plans that adhere to five planning principles: hierarchical polycentric urban development; transit-oriented development; locally dense residential development; penetration of green areas into built-up areas across several nested scales; preservation of interconnected networks of natural and green areas having various sizes.

Fractalopolis supports both the design of a multifractal plan for an urban region and the assessment of the suitability of developing each part of the region. It helps to define where to create new housing and new facilities according to the five planning principles set out above.

The conceptual bases of Fractalopolis have been set out by Pierre Frankhauser (laboratory ThéMA, Besançon, France) and Cécile Tannier (laboratory Chrono-Environnement, Besançon, France). The computer application has been created by Gilles Vuidel (laboratory ThéMA, Besançon, France), Cécile Tannier, and Pierre Frankhauser.

Fractalopolis has been originally used by Claudia Yamu (University of Groningen, The Netherlands) as part of her PhD thesis at ThéMA.

This research received financial support from France’s ministry for ecology, sustainable development and energy as part of the PREDIT 3 program.

Download

Fractalopolis is an open source software distributed under GPL licence. The application is a .jar software developed in Java language and necessitates the installation of Java 7 at least to be executed on any operating system (Linux, Mac OS or MS Windows).

Documentation

Software documentation

User guide

Source code

Fractalopolis is licenced under GPL and the source code can be downloaded from the sourcesup git repository:

git clone https://git.renater.fr/anonscm/git/fractalopolis/fractalopolis.git

References

Frankhauser P., Tannier C., Vuidel G., Houot H. (2018), An integrated multifractal modelling to urban and regional planning, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 67, 132–146.

Yamu C., Frankhauser P. (2015). Spatial accessibility to amenities, natural areas and urban green spaces: using a multiscale, multifractal simulation model for managing urban sprawl, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 42(6), 1054-1078.