Assessment of fifteen years of urban modeling

The purpose of this paper is, through an ‘ethnographic’ approach, to review where the urban and regional modeling field has been since its inception, regarding analytical inputs to policy analysis, policy development, policy assessment etc. Assessed are: What progress in understanding, explanation, evaluation has there been? Do we know a little or a lot more after 15 years than we did in 1962–1963? More than anything—given our often overly ambitious aspirations, false starts, and imprecise objectives: Can representative members of the urban/regional modeling profession be more helpful to policy makers today than we were in the mid-sixties and early seventies? The paper reviews the phases through which this particular modeling field has achieved its current state of maturity, relative calm, and usefulness, and concludes with a discussion of how we could do even better.