SIMULATING FUTURE URBAN DISTRIBUTION THROUGH AN AGENT-BASED MODEL:
THE CASE OF THE METROPOLITAN REGION OF MADRID
Summary:
The research project will explore potential urban growth within a selected area of the Metropolitan Region of Madrid through an Agent-Based Model according to the behavior of three agents: population, real-estate agents and urban planners.
Key-words: agent-based model, urban simulation, Metropolitan Region of Madrid, future urban scenarios
My research
Identifying the effects that agents may cause on urban development within a metropolitan area may help us understand the complex dynamics that underly the urban growth phenomenon. Several models have been proposed to simulate future urban scenarios, but few studies have examined the potential of agent-based models (ABM), which has the advantage of taking into account the behavior of urban planning actors and their relationships during the simulations. Even fewer studies have attempted to apply the ABM to urban development at the regional level.
The present research applies an ABM to describe the urban development of the periphery of the Metropolitan Region of Madrid on the basis of the expected urban pressure. The model identifies several behavioral variables for the three most important agents – population, real estate agents, and urban planners – and generates a model that captures their behavior and the feedback cycles that regulate that behavior.
The set of possible outputs differ from each other according to the chosen input parameters and should be relevant for the measurement of different impacts generated, in order to support studies on urban expansion tendencies or on the weight of the income component with regard to residential choices.
Technically, the other strength of this proposition is that it introduces modeling with agents in the field of urban studies in Spain on a regional scale. So far little attention has been paid to this issue, although we find some studies of ABM applied to nonurban research areas (i.e., ecology, economics, political studies, computing). On the other hand, there are a range of urban development studies based on simulation modeling but using different approaches such as Cellular Automata, Micro simulation, Neural Network or Multi Criteria Analysis. This research also aims to fill this gap and shows that an ABM may be useful to better understand urban phenomena and to simulate futures scenarios.