Spatial correlation is a statistic that can provide a measure of spatial clustering of various social and economic phenomena.  This is certainly helpful for planning that needs to be based on a good understanding of the spatial patterns of those phenomena.

Spatial correlation can also be the first step to address the heterogeneity problem due to spatial correlation in any causal analysis based on regression analysis.

Urban planning is a technical and political process concerned with the control of the use of land and design of the urban environment, including transportation networks, to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities. Spatial correlation is an underlying way of modeling both urban growth and form, and the correlation models can be mathematically analyzed by scaling transform. In fact, based on the density function, a general spatial correlation function of cities can be constructed.

Dear friend. The answer is not unique. If your urban basin is small and your rainfall homogeneous, then the point and spatial rainfall will give you the same results. However, if the rainfall is not homogeneous, the spatial consideration could be critical. As an example, I applied a spatio-temporal rainfall generator and I compared to Alterning blocks, both coupled to a standard HEC-HMS configuration and the basin outlet peak flow were three time higher (ratio 3) using the alterning-block procedure.

The RainSimV3 software for rainfall generation works really well most of the time (be carefull with the climate characteristics), Barton et al 2008, 2010. We used it successfully. As an example you can see:

Sordo-Ward A., Bianucci P., Garrote L. and Granados A., 2016. The influence of the annual number of storms on the derivation of the flood frequency curve through event-based simulation. Water, 8, 335, doi:10.3390/w8080335

Muhammad

The spatial urban correlation is irrelevant, since the people of a place are accustomed to a certain density and others to a lesser one. In Asia the spatial correlation is diferent than that of a people that produces food. The spatial correlation is a mathematical vision of the urban problematic, but those who inhabit are people with different customs and ways of life. I think it is more interesting to understand the habitability as part of the daily dynamics of the city.

I agree with analyzing habitability to identify the advantages offered by a space, since some prefer large spaces but most prefer that it be their property.