A unifying modelling framework to simulate the Spatial Economic Transport Interaction process at urban and national scales

Much effort has been expended in the last decades in developing modelling frameworks to simulate the so-called Spatial Economic Transport Interaction (SETI) process. Models have been originated according to autonomous bodies of knowledge connected to the analysis and interpretation of each reference spatial scale: urban and national. However, there have been few exchanges of knowledge flowing from one scale to another. This paper proposes a unifying modelling framework able to capture the two-way relationship between spatial economic and transport systems at both the national and urban scales. Four main elements are presented: (i) a literature review of Spatial Economic (SE) models at national and urban scales; (ii) a description of the theoretical evolution involving a class of SE models from the theoretical backgrounds to the current formulations; (iii) the proposition of a SETI model which has two modelling components: a transport macro-model and a spatial economic macro-model; (iv) a model specification for national and urban scales. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.