Urban Growth Modeling Based on a Game between Farmers and Governments: Case Study of Urban Fringe in Wuhan, Hubei Province in China

Abstract

AbstractUrban systems are complicated systems where land-use changes may significantly affect the environment and the ecosystem. Therefore, modeling urban growth is crucial for urban planners and administrators to support sustainable development. This paper provides a spatially disaggregated model for urban growth simulation that is characterized by the innovative idea that considers the behavior of residents and couples the explorations of the game between farmers and governments in the land development process. Three kinds of agents, namely, residents, farmers, and governments, make their decisions according to their land use–conversion preferences. Through the use of different strategies that are abstracted from actual land transactions in China, the payoffs to farmers and governments in the game of land expropriation are quantified and then the Nash equilibrium solution of the game is worked out. Those cells with mixed strategy Nash equilibrium solutions that include a probability of greater than 0.5 ...