Danny Czamanski

• PhD
• Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

Urban systems’ dynamics are the result of two intertwined processes that operate at different rhythms: their physical structure and underlying social processes. This paper suggests a novel approach to the spatial analysis of urban systems, using neighborhoods as a basic building block. Neighborhoods are usually the minimal homogeneous geographical...

What is the definition of a “liveable city”? Although the concept is not new and plenty of particular descriptions of liveable cities exist, a baseline and widely agreed-upon definition is still elusive. In addition, the recent introduction of the “big-data” era opened a plethora of exciting research avenues that, sometimes, seem to be only loosely...

The ability of cities to recuperate from disturbances and return to their evolutionary pathways depends, first and foremost, on the type of damage that the shock created. But in addition, it depends on how information is transmitted in the urban system and on how noise filters distort the information that reaches economic agents. So long as the tra...

Unlabelled: The physical structure of cities is the result of self-organization processes in which profit-maximizing developers are key players. The recent Covid-19 pandemic was a natural experiment by means of which it is possible to gain insights into shifts in the spatial structure of cities by studying developers' behavior. Behavioral changes...

In this paper, we present results of a land-use forecasting model that we calibrated with vast geo-referenced data of a major metropolitan area. Each land parcel includes information concerning regulations indicating permitted land-uses as well as the certain characteristics of existing buildings. Data concerning all real estate transactions includ...

Urban scholars have made great advances to understand the reciprocal relations between households and their immediate environments as a means for the creation of efficient urban administrative systems. However, from an urban management perspective, reliance on geographical areas fixed for long periods of time as basic data collection constitutes a...

Economic disparities among cities and regions persist and in some cases are increasing. To promote development of lagging economies, extant policies focus on the lagging regions and attempt to create conditions that are attractive to the immigration of capital, labor and above all knowledge. We study a variety of policies in the context of self-org...

The structure of modern cities is characterized by the uneven spatial distribution of people and activities. Contrary to economic theory, it is neither evenly distributed nor entirely monocentric. The observed reality is the result of various feedbacks in the context of the interactions of attraction and repulsion. Heretofore, there is no agreement...

In this article we explore the claim that spatial interactions among cities are significant drivers of their growth. We assert that reallocation of ideas among cities is a source of improved allocation of resources. We propose a closed economy, agent-based model that is in constant flux. It is populated by autonomous agents that compete and adjust...

We present a comprehensive agent-based model of a closed system of cities. The model includes two types of agents—employees and firms. Firms compete for workers and make decisions concerning what to produce and whether to adopt innovations. Individual employees make migration decisions. Some migrants become intrapreneurs when their employers adopt...

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Migration studies emphasize the role of economic, social and cultural capital in shaping out-migration decisions. Yet, little attention is paid to the effect of capital endowment on return migration, particularly among the highly educated. This article examines the extent to which different forms of capital determine return decisions of early-caree...

Proximity to nature is highly valued by urbanites, who demonstrate higher willingness to pay for housing at locations near open and green spaces. However, nature in cities can generate negative externalities as well. In this article, we illustrate the complex relationship between cities and nature and suggest that their balance is time and location...

Performance of a range of urban amenities is influenced by their accessibility to pedestrians. Success in attracting pedestrians to a particular location depends on how they project visuospatial information. In this paper, we propose an original method for analysing the visuospatial integration of particular locations within a street network. As a...

In this short paper we suggest that analyses carried out at a crude spatial resolution and by means of simple dynamics are misleading. There is a need to take into account various feedbacks and vague boundaries of cities, towns and villages. Analyses at a fine spatial resolution suggest a great variety of possible future evolutions of rural areas....

Last decades saw a dramatic increase in wildlife populations within urban areas. Policymakers seek to minimize human-wildlife conflicts resulting from overabundance of species, such as wild boars (Sus scrofa). To this end, there is a need to understand the drivers governing infiltration of wildlife into cities. In this paper we study the availabili...

Urban spatial structure is shaped by decisions of land developers that both react to and influence urban plans. The paper presents an agent-based model of the evolution of the land development industry in a city regulated by a land-use plan that is modified from time to time by the planner. At the heart of the model are investment decisions of deve...

p> Purpose: Proximity to nature is highly valued by urbanites. They demonstrate higher willingness to pay for housing at locations near open and green spaces. But, nature in cities can generate negative externalities as well. The aim of this paper is to present the complex relationship between nature and cities and the possible negative influence o...

The great urbanization project that started some 10,000 years ago is approaching its final stages. We focus on the spatial evolution of mature cities and on the possibility that information and communication technology will contribute to a phase transition and a start of a new urban life cycle. In a context of agent-based model that includes hetero...

While an ever-growing percentage of the world's population is urban, the rate at which cities grow is not uniform. The lifetime of individual cities includes periods of fast growth, slow growth and periods of shrinkage. There exists an extensive literature concerned with possible means to manage specific pathologies. It is our view that the design...

No abstract is available for this article.

Purpose: Proximity to nature is highly valued by urbanites. They demonstrate higher willingness to pay for housing at locations near open and green spaces. But, nature in cities can generate negative externalities as well. The aim of this paper is to present the complex relationship between nature and cities and the possible negative influence of u...

Human spatial behavior, navigation and activity in cities are affected by the visibility of urban environment. In this paper pedestrian visual search for urban locations is conceptualized as a stochastic process and modelled by random walks (a succession of random steps). Urban environments are represented as a chain of navigational decisions formi...

Urban open spaces are considered as spatial residuals of the expansion of built areas. The environmental impact of the resulting land-cover pattern and associated ecosystem services are frequently evaluated at a crude spatial resolution only. However, wild animals use remaining interconnected fine-grain open spaces as an infrastructure for movement...

Urban construction activities are subject to periods of fast expansion followed by periods of slow growth. Some of these expansions are limited in size, while others are huge. Therefore, it is not surprising that equilibrium-oriented classical models of urban spatial structure are hard pressed to explain the formation of modern cities with polycent...

As the world's population is increasing, the world is expected to become much more urban. The pressure on nature in rural areas is increasing at a decreasing rate. In the future, the main stage on which people will cause stress to ecosystems is within and near cities. In this paper we describe the processes of change in the spatial evolution of cit...

The continuous expansion and growth of urban and settled areas result in a mosaic of open spaces which provide important habitat for species. Species richness within the urban matrix has been commonly studied in relation to urban-rural gradients, where the richness in open-space patches has been evaluated with respect to their location along this g...

The spatial arrangement of socio-economic facilities in the city is shaped by the interaction of many individuals in the context of a particular physical structure. The urban physical environment displays characteristics of networks (graphs) where nodes and edges are embedded in space. For decades, the analysis of urban network structure represents...

As cities are rapidly expanding and encroaching into agricultural and natural areas, a question of primary concern is how this expansion affects surrounding agriculture and natural landscapes. This book presents a wide spectrum of both theoretical and empirical approaches to simulation and assessment of landscape dynamics. The first part presents s...

In a recent paper Czamanski and Roth (2011 Annals of Regional Science 46 101–118) demonstrated that, because the profitability of construction projects is influenced by variations in the time incidence of costs and revenues, despite declining willingness to pay and land gradients with distance from central business districts, profitability can expe...

Recent scholarship emphasizes differences among ethnic groups’ internal migration patterns. Yet, with few exceptions, research has focused on the Anglo-American world, neglecting experiences from other regions. This paper is part of a larger research project that studies mobility among the Arab minority in Israel and its driving forces. In this pap...

This paper raises questions regarding the desirable sizes of retail facilities within an existing urban system. We address questions of efficiency by reference to a social welfare function and by reference to profit maximization by developers. To this end we utilize a gravity-type simulation model and apply it in the case of Haifa, Israel based on...

The paper is concerned with the formation of polycentric cities. The model we introduce includes two types of developers and planning authorities. Developers’ characteristics, such as scale of operations, availability of own capital, and time preferences, lead to various decisions concerning the choice of location and development investment. They a...

In a previous paper (Czamanski and Roth in Ann Reg Sci 46(1):101–118, 2011), we demonstrated that spatial variation in characteristic time can lead to leapfrogging and scattered development, especially in times when interest rates are low or negligible.We explained this result by modeling the simple behavior of developers in the context of a single...

This paper addresses the interplay between demographics and housing market dynamics in Haifa, Israel. In the 1990s the city of Haifa, with a population of approximately 220,000, absorbed about 45,000 immigrants. The case of Haifa offers a typical non-controlled experiment on how demographic shocks and associ-ated changes in housing demand affect th...

A wealth‐building, egalitarian argument is persistently used to justify homeownership policies. This paper examines this argument in light of the Israeli housing market experience during the 1990s. Under the pressure of mass immigration from the former USSR, the governmental mortgage scheme evolved to misleadingly appears as a voucher system. This...

This paper suggests a plausible explanation for the spatial evolution of high-rise buildings. Contrary to intuitive expectations the histograms and spatial distribution in cities indicate peculiar and non-continuous patterns. These patterns evolve as a result of developers’ behavior in real-estate markets. One of the critical variables in decision-...

This paper is concerned with the structure and dynamics of modern retail facilities in Israel. It presents the first comprehensive quantitative study of the recent trends in Israeli retail. On the basis of an unique database that includes sizes and locations of retailers for a number of years, we test and challenge some of the traditional theories,...

Abstract. In this paper we suggest an approach for understanding the spatial behavior and structure of cities. It views cities as physical objects and is based on urban morphology alone. The units of examination are urban clusters instead of municipalities defined by politically determined boundaries. Clusters are defined as contiguous built-up urb...

Contrary to the popular notion that the advancing frontier of urban development has been swallowing and destroying natural ecosystems we present evidence that the sprawl of cities creates ample open space in peri-urban areas. Traditional view of city–nature dichotomy and clear spatial separation should be substituted by a vision that reflects the c...

This paper presents a quasi-3D cellular automaton (CA) simulation model of cities. A 2D CA model includes a cell attribute that represents building height information. Dynamic processes are depicted using four parameters: initial building coverage, interaction with adjacent neighborhood, inertia, and noise. These parameters can assume simple econom...

This paper uses a new method of testing for linear and nonlinear lead/lag relationships between time series, introduced by Brooks and Hinich [Brooks, C. and Hinich, M. J. Cross-Correlations and Cross-Bicorrelations in Sterling Exchange Rates. Journal of Empirical Finance 20 (1999), 385–404.], on Alberta's natural gas and power markets. The test, ba...

Canada has the largest hydrocarbon resource potential after Saudi Arabia in the world. Most of the proven reserves of crude bitumen (≅ 28 billion cubic meters) are located in Alberta in the form of oil sands. At present, oil sands accounts for about 40% of the total Canadian crude oil production. This share is expected to exceed 70% by 2015. It is...

This paper presents an analysis of the growth of towns in the Tel Aviv metropolis. It indicates a similarity in the variation of populations so that the population functions can be scaled and superposed one onto the other. This is a strong indication that the growth mechanism for all these towns is the same. Two different models are presented to in...

The ‘public leasehold system’ (PLS) in Israel and in Canberra was designed against the backdrop of 19th century social reform ideology. Recurring changes during the 20th century brought about practical abolition of the PLS. This paper attempts to review the PLS. A comparison of the two case studies helps to identify the inherent weaknesses, and sug...

Fractality in cities implies that a city possesses a similar structure at several different scales. Its existence is of great significance because it suggests the presence of some hidden process that operates at different urban scales and generates similarity. Recently, we studied the Tel Aviv metropolis at the levels of the entire metropolis and o...

This paper presents an analysis of the spatial and temporal development of Tel-Aviv. The central notion in the analysis is the old concept of leap-frogging. Instead of seeing the population's evolution as a growth process from the centre of the metropolis outwards, we consider the population's development as taking place in different centres in a s...

Urban evolution is composed of two interlinked phenomena. Over time, changes occur in urban size as measured, for example, by population. The geographic space occupied by human activities and by buildings also changes over time. Those two aspects of urban evolution are linked and, as such, should be studied in tandem. In this paper we present an an...

We present here an analysis of the development of the Tel Aviv metropolis by using the concept of fractals. The fractal dimension of the entire metropolis, and of its parts, was estimated as a function of time, from 1935 onwards. The central part and the northern tier are fractal at all times. Their fractal dimension increased with time. However, t...

The past decades have shown a remarkable growth in entrepreneurship among migrants. Recent studies on ethnic entrepreneurship have pointed at an increasing share of migrants in urban small- and medium-sized entrepreneurial businesses. These migrant activities are crucial to the urban economy in many countries, as they employ a significant part of t...

Population redistribution policies rely on subsidies that affect the relative factor costs across space. These locational subsidies cause technical and allocative inefficiency. The extent of the inefficiency and the success of the policies depend on the industrial organization of the target firms. The paper presents an expense-preference model by m...

An expense-preference model is the basis for the representation of professional management's interests and the consequent location of the firm's plant. In a linear space the model does not exclude intermedite locations, as is the case in profit-maximization models. On the basis of comparative statics analysis it is demonstrated that increasing the...

The approach most often followed by operations researchers when dealing with the problem of industrial location is based on the notion that very complex location decisions can be reduced into an algorithmic form involving few cost factors. In this they follow closely the orthodox location theory. Recently, there has been a growing dissatisfaction w...

The paper reports results of an effort to replace the simple notions of transportation and labor costs with other measures of friction of distance and place specific factors in industrial location theory. Friction of distance variables are defined in relation to (1) transport of goods, (2) movement of persons, and (3) transfer of ideas. Transport o...

This report examines the benefits and costs of increasing the end-use efficiency of natural gas through the use of gas storage facilities by distribution companies in Ohio. In our cost-benefit analysis the benefits to the people of Ohio from better resource allocation are compared with the costs of resources expended to obtain storage. The costs of...

Recent interest in the structure of electric rates is the result of increasing electric bills for consumers and growing production costs for the electric companies. Economic efficiency implies that electricity prices should be based on marginal cost; that is, the cost of providing an additional unit of electricity. It also implies that the current...

This report examines the benefits and costs of increasing the end-use efficiency of natural gas through the use of gas storage facilities by distribution companies in Ohio.