Cities are so complex that we constantly build models to represent them, understand them and attempt to plan them. Models represent a middle ground between the singular configurations of cities and universal theories. This is what makes them valuable and prone to circulate (between places, institutions and languages) and evolve to adapt to new ideas, local conditions and/or other models. When it comes to analytical urban models (i.e. analytical representations of cities developed to study or simulate part of their structure or dynamics), there is a lack of academic understanding regarding how context and circulation affect their content, use and interpretation. What happens to analytical urban models and their reception during their circulation across geographical and disciplinary boundaries? How have different academic disciplines interacted with, contributed to and been influenced by analytical urban models? What are the consequences of urban models’ mobility for our understanding of cities? In this article, we employ the policy mobilities framework to analyse the circulation of analytical urban models. We use six canonical models as case studies to determine how their assumptions came about and how these models have circulated across different domains of policy and application by using biographical information and model analysis. The first contribution of the article is to demonstrate by example that our hypothesis regarding the influence of context is consistent. We also show that highly transferable/mobile models share common characteristics relating to contingent factors such as their creators’ biographies, institutional context and the traditional markers of power relations.

中文翻译：

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分析模型的作用及其在城市研究和政策中的循环

城市是如此复杂，以至于我们不断地构建模型来代表它们、理解它们并尝试规划它们。模型代表了城市的奇异配置和普遍理论之间的中间立场。这使得它们很有价值，并且易于传播（在地方、机构和语言之间）并不断发展以适应新的想法、当地条件和/或其他模式。当谈到分析城市模型（即为研究或模拟其部分结构或动态而开发的城市分析表示）时，学术界对背景和流通如何影响其内容、使用和解释缺乏理解。分析性城市模型及其在跨越地理和学科边界的流通过程中的接受会发生什么？不同的学科如何与分析性城市模型相互作用、促进并受其影响？城市模型的流动性对我们理解城市有何影响？在本文中，我们采用政策流动性框架来分析分析性城市模型的循环。我们使用六个典型模型作为案例研究，通过传记信息和模型分析来确定它们的假设是如何产生的，以及这些模型如何在不同的政策和应用领域中传播。本文的第一个贡献是通过例子证明我们关于上下文影响的假设是一致的。我们还表明，高度可转移/移动的模型具有与偶然因素相关的共同特征，例如其创建者的传记、制度背景和权力关系的传统标记。