Abstract
UrbanSim is a new urban simulation model, developed over the past several years, which is now operational in three urban areas in the United States. The model system is designed to address emerging needs to better coordinate transportation and land use planning as a result of recognition of the strong interactions between land use and transportation, increasing pressure from federal transportation and environmental legislation, and growing adoption of state growth management programs. The model system is implemented as a set of interacting model components that represent the major actors and choices in the urban system, including household moving and residential location, business choices of employment location, and developer choices of locations and types of real estate development, all subject to the influence of governmental transportation and land use policy scenarios. The model design is unusual in the degree of disaggregation of space, time, and agents, and in the adoption of a dynamic disequilibrium approach. The objective of this paper is to describe the entire system at a sufficient level of detail to convey the key specification and design choices made in implementing the system.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ben-Akiva, Moshe and Steven R. Lerman. (1987). Discrete Choice Analysis: Theory and Application to Travel Demand. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
de la Barra, Tomás. (1995). Integrated Land Use and Transportation Modeling: Decision Chains and Hierarchies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
DiPasquale, Denise and William Wheaton. (1996). Urban Economics and Real Estate Markets. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Dowling, Richard, Robert Ireson, Alexander Skabardonis, David Gillen, Peter Stopher, Alan Horowitz, John Bowman, Elizabeth Deakin, and Robert Dulla. (2000). “Predicting Short-Term and Long-Term Air Quality Effects of Traffic-Flow Improvement Projects: Interim Report and Phase II Work Plan.” Technical Report 25-21, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council.
Echenique, M., A.D.J. Flowerdew, J.D. Hunt, T.R. Mayo, I.J. Skidmore, and D.C. Simmonds. (1990). “The MEPLAN Models of Bilbao, Leeds and Dortmund.” Transport Reviews 10(4), 309–322.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (2000). “Projecting Land-Use Change: A Summary of Models for Assessing the Effects of Community Growth and Change on Land-Use Patterns.” Technical Report EPA-600-R-00-098, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Cincinnati, OH., 260 pp.
Free Software Foundation. (1991). GNU General Public License, Version 2. Available on http: //www.gnu.org/ copyleft/gpl.html.
Jensen, Finn V. (1996). An Introduction to Bayesian Networks. London: UCL Press.
Miller, Eric, David Kriger, and John Hunt. (1999). “Integrated Urban Models for Simulation of Transit and Land Use Policies.” Final Report, Project H-12. TCRP Web Document 9, Transit Cooperative Highway Research Project, National Academy of Sciences: Washington, DC. Also available at http: //books.nap.edu/books/tcr009/ html.
Noth, Michael, Alan Borning, and Paul Waddell. (2000). “An Extensible, Modular Architecture for Simulating Urban Development, Transportation, and Environmental Impacts.” Technical Report 2000-12-01, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
Putman, S. (1983). Integrated Urban Models: Policy Analysis of Transportation and Land Use. Pion: London.
Waddell, Paul. (2000). “A Behavioral Simulation Model for Metropolitan Policy Analysis and Planning: Residential Location and Housing Market Components of UrbanSim.” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 2000 27(2), 247–263.
Waddell, Paul. (2002). “UrbanSim: Modeling Urban Development for Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association 68(3), 297–314.
Waddell, Paul, Brian J.L. Berry, and Irving Hoch. (1993). “Residential Property Values in a Multinodal Urban Area: New Evidence on the Implicit Price of Location.” Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics 7, 117–141.
Waddell, Paul, Alan Borning, Michael Noth, Nathan Freier, Michael Becke, and Gudmundur Ulfarsson. (2000). UrbanSim Reference Guide, Version 0.9. Available at http: //www.urbansim.org.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Waddell, P., Borning, A., Noth, M. et al. Microsimulation of Urban Development and Location Choices: Design and Implementation of UrbanSim. Networks and Spatial Economics 3, 43–67 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022049000877
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022049000877