Agent-Based Simulation of West Asian Urban Dynamics: Impact of Refugees

Ali Termos,Neil Yorke-Smith,Stefano Picascia

doi:10.18564/jasss.4472

Abstract

Rapid international migration of significant populations generates profound implications for countries in West Asia, Europe, and other regions. The motivation of this work is to develop an agent-based model (ABM) to capture the existence of such migrant and refugee flows, and to explore the effects of these flows on urban dynamics. Advances in agent-based modelling have led to theoretically-grounded spatial agent models of urban dynamics, capturing the dynamics of population, property prices, and regeneration. In this article we leverage such an extant agent-based model founded on the rent-gap theory, as a lens to study the effect of sizeable refugee migration upon a capital city in West Asia. In order to calibrate and validate the simulation model we construct indices for housing prices and other factors. Results from the model, implemented in NetLogo, show the impact of migration shock on the housing market, and identify the relative efficacy of housing intervention policies. Our work progresses towards a tool for policy makers asking what-if questions about the urban environment in the context of migration.

Highlights

Our motivation in this work is to develop an agent-based model (ABM) to capture the existence of such migrant and refugee flows, and to explore the e ects upon urban dynamics: the dynamics of population, segregation, property prices, and regeneration
ABMs have been exploited to reproduce the evolution of the urban form (Stanilov & Batty ), to model the urban dynamics typical of cities in the developed world, such as segregation (from Schelling ( ) onwards) and gentrification (Picascia et al ), and to model dynamics typical of the megacities of the developing world, such as the emergence and evolution of informal settlements (Patel et al ; Feitosa et al )
Our motivation comes from the sizeable contemporary international migrations a ecting notably countries in West Asia and Europe

Summary

Introduction

As surveyed by Huang et al ( ), the preferred approach in most residential mobility models is to identify individual or household-level agents as the main actors and describe emerging patterns as purely bottom-up outcomes of the interaction of such agents This approach poses a risk, in our view, of underestimating the broader economic processes that impact the urban form and constrain individual behaviour. The rent gap is the di erence between the actual (current) economic return from land, and the maximum potential return if the land were put to its “highest and best use” (Smith ). This gap is due to the decline in maintenance condition which properties undergo, together with changes in technologies which render dwellings obsolete.

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Conclusion