Exploring normative scenarios of land use development decisions with an agent-based simulation laboratory

Suburbia and exurbia have an undeniable appeal to many urban dwellers. At the same time, they are characterized by an ineffective and fragmented residential patchwork of developed and undeveloped tracts. This research addresses a question of whether other arrangements of land, ameliorating the negative effects of current growth in the suburban fringe, are feasible from the perspectives of planning agencies and property developers. In order to answer this research question, the study employs two loosely coupled land use models: multiobjective land use allocation (MOLA) and an exploratory agent-based modeling (ABM) of residential development. The aligned modeling methodology has a number of advantages. Firstly, it combines top-down and bottom-up modeling. Such an approach is an attempt to represent society from two standpoints: institutions on one side (like zoning regulations of local planning agencies) and individual agents on the other (like developers). Secondly, the framework combines both static form (MOLA) and dynamic process (ABM). The MOLA model is equipped with mechanisms that encourage both compact and alternative residential land use arrangements. The outcomes of this model are used as zoning regulations in the ABM to examine the impact of regional-scale top-down urban growth plans on agent disutility which reflects the competitiveness of the local property market. Selected MOLA plans are further relaxed using different distance buffers. The findings point to a complex disutility–fragmentation relationship. Under the simulated planning situation, a potentially acceptable solution for planners and developers involves a relatively high compactness of development, which could satisfy agents’ overall disutility.