Growth and Densification Processes in Suburban Landcapes - a Spatial Agent - Simulation

The paper discusses a model that performs the simulation of polycentric development of suburban systems. It introduces different settlement pattern growth speeds in different suburban regions considering housing area densification and land use change from open space to built up area. Accordingly, the approach concentrates on a Spatial Agent Model (SAM) to perform the movement patterns and the settlement densification processes as well as land use change. In particular, the approach takes into account the suburban population migration as driving force for polycentric development patterns. Therefore, this model is better adapted to real world suburban processes than Cellular Automata (CA) applications that are based only on general land use transition rules applied to neighbouring land use patterns.