Decision Making and Optimization in Regional Planning

Abstract

By means of my contribution I wish to express my high esteem of Åke E. Andersson and his fundamental contributions to regional science [1]. In my article I will make an attempt to show how my own field of research Synergetics [2] might be able to contribute to regional science. My starting point will be that settlements with their buidlings, such as homes, service centers, stores a.s.o. can be considered as patterns in an abstract sense [3]. At the same time, these arrangements serve specific functions so that we may also speak of specific functional patterns. A fundamental problem of regional planning is the question of the competition or interplay between organization (planning) versus self-organization. Synergetics may be considered as a rather general theory of self-organization. Self-organization means that a system acquires its specific structure or function without specific interference from the outside. One must bear in mind, however, that self-organization requires general conditions that are imposed on the region by the planner or by the environment. Thus self-organization is in most cases never just a wild growth, but a growth under certain conditions. On the other hand, the details of the evolving structures need not be fixed from the outside. It came as a big surprise to a number of scientists that self-organization may take place not only in the animate world of animals and plants, but also in the inanimate world of physics and chemistry. And this was actually the starting point of synergetics.