Using Fractal Dimensions for Characterizing Intra‐urban Diversity: The Example of Brussels

The objective of this paper is to compare fractal‐based parameters calculated by different fractal methods for urban built‐up areas and to link the observed spatial variations to variables commonly used in urban geography, urban economics, or land‐use planning. Computations are performed on Brussels, Belgium. Two fractal methods (correlation and dilation) are systematically applied for evaluating the fractal dimension of built‐up surfaces; correlation is used to evaluate the fractal dimension of the borders (lines). Analyses show that while fractal dimension is ideal for distinguishing the morphology of Brussels, each estimation technique leads to slightly different results. Interesting associations are to be found between the fractal dimensions and rent, distance, income, and planning rules. Despite its limitations, fractal analysis seems to be a promising tool for describing the morphology of the city and for simulating its genesis and planning. The model is robust: it replicates the urban spatial regularities and patterns, and could hence fruitfully be integrated into intra‐urban simulation processes.     

OCCUPATION AND ETHNICITY IN FIVE NINETEENTH-CENTURY CITIES: A COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY

Abstract

Literary critics and historians often interpret authors and authors' works as more or less significant, but are reluctant to quantify those works. The interdisciplinary field of creativity studies, however, poses methods of quantifying the eminence of an author's works. This study uses four measures from that field (anthology entries, scholarly citations, entries in books of quotations, and auction sale records) and one measure from the fields of computational linguistics and data mining (ngrams using millions of books digitized by Google) to assess the eminence of John Milton's thirty-one prose works1. For the purpose of this study, Milton's short “A Letter to a Friend Concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth” (1659) was not included in the quantitative analysis out of concern with possible conflations and confusions with letters in Milton's Familiar Letters. and their relation to his greater achievement in epic poetry. These measures indicate the singular eminence of Areopagitica, Milton's 1644 tract on the liberty of unlicensed printing.