The first fully-fledged academic meeting about cellular automata for urban simulation took place in November 2012 in Porto, Portugal. 

It brought together academics that followed the seminal work of Waldo Tobler, who proposed the concept of CA as a geographical modelling concept in the the 1970s. Batty, Couclelis, White and Engelen discussed with the younger generations of academics the different theoretical evolutions and new implementations of CA in urban and spatial systems. 41 presentations were presented during the three days of intensive academic debates in the unique settings of the Serralves Foundation in Porto, Portugal