Simulation of Polycentric Urban Growth Dynamics Through Agents

In contrast to typical urban regions dominated by a core city located in the region’s centre and a suburban fringe, the Austrian Rhine Valley, selected as the study area, can be described as a peri-urban region with some medium-sized centres and various rural villages, all developing in different ways. Thus, a simulation approach has to be applied that allows for different settlement growth and densification velocities in order to reach model results which come close to real land-use transitions. The urban growth model presented here is based on a multi-agent system which simulates location decisions of households and company start-ups within a cellular landscape driven by regional and local attractiveness patterns. The model has been applied to generate control runs for the past decade and validated by comparing its results with observed land-use changes at municipality level and at raster cell level. Scenario runs for the future have been conducted assuming suspended zoning regulations leading to a different actors’ behaviour.