This paper presents a survey of methods used to model and to analyse visual events in urban scenes. What we call a visual event is an event which occurs in the visual field while we are moving or while the scene is moving. This could be an object appearance or disappearance, or a shape, a colour, or a texture modification. But here, we mainly consider the visual events provided by objects set during a motion. In the second section, we examine some methods to model the events that come inside our visual field, giving a first interpretation to a urban environment. This is done after showing methods to represent the visual field. In the third section, we focus on different methods used to analyse and to evaluate the visibility in urban environment. Finally, we conclude on the way each of these representations of visual perceptions and each of these visual analysis methods act, and in which way they could be extended.