Modeling growth and densification processes in suburban regions-simulation of landscape transition with spatial agents

Urban sprawl is an essential environmental issue to be monitored and forecasted in order to think about alternatives that could lead to a more sustainable future development. Thus, the objective of the project presented here is to simulate the past and future transformation of suburban land use patterns in the Vienna Region. (The paper describes some results of the project, “STAU-Wien” (City–Suburb relations and development in the Vienna Region), was carried out during 2000–2002). The paper discusses driving forces of suburban growth, and presents a model that simulates polycentric development of suburban systems. The model introduces different settlement growth velocities within the suburban region considering housing area densification and land use change from open space to built up area. In particular, the model takes into account suburban population migration and commercial start ups controlled by regional and local factors (attractiveness/constraints) in the suburban Vienna Region: large and small scale accessibility (traveling time to the core city, access to motorways), land prices, landscape attractiveness, social and commercial services supply, traffic exposure obstacles as well as (land use) zoning constraints. The approach concentrates on a Spatial Agent Model to stimulate regional migration and allocation decisions of households and commercial enterprises aiming in the selection of target municipalities. Land use change will finally be performed by a cellular automaton to decide on densification and land use change. The model has been developed and applied to simulate prior and future landscape transition processes for the suburban region in the surroundings of Vienna, Austria.  2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.