The statistics suggest that by 2025 Copenhagen will have approximately 22,000 more young people and children and 33,000 more between the age of 18 and 29. However, with such soaring numbers in a small country like Denmark, this can certainly put a lot of pressure on the social services especially at the municipality level. Such growth in numbers calls for better planning and more social services like schools, daycare institution, and infrastructure to meet their needs (Copenhagen Municipality 2011). This calls for a scientific explanation of the complexity of urban growth patterns in order to understand the fast rate of urban growth that is taking place today.
This study therefore focuses on determining how much urban growth has taken place in the greater Copenhagen area in a period of only 20 years from 1990 to 2010. The key method used to model the urban growth is the cellular automata method, which has been used by several researchers and urbanists to measure urban growth. The differences between CA and other models are quite distinguishable. Some of them include its ability to produce a clear resolution spatially (White 1997), the ability to model urban complexities based on simple rules.
The challenge for this study was to design a cellular automata model that can be used to model and possibly predict future urban growth. For urban growth, modelling this would be applicable in answering questions raised in this study like: is the area urban or non-urban? How close the cell of interest is to features for example the core of Copenhagen city and other urban centers, protected areas like the green wedges in the finger plan and the camping or summer cottages? In addition, how the constraints applied will affect the urban growth pattern. The spatial patterns to visualize urban growth in the greater Copenhagen area is simulated using Cellular Automata by representing the Cell element of the city whereby the cell will represent the spatial and physical, set up of the city.