RESMOBcity - Modelling and simulating residential mobility in a shrinking city

Shrinking cities are characterized by a huge oversupply of dwellings and resulting residential vacancies. Consequences of urban shrinkage following demographic transition, fertility decline and individualisation enter discussions among urban planners and policy makers in Europe. The shrinking city of Leipzig in Eastern Germany was identified as a case in point to study residential mobility and land use change using agent-based modelling techniques: social scientists developed a concept of household types based on empirical data that form a unique base to construct a data-driven agent-based model.

The spatially explicit simulation model RESMOBcity presented here ‘translates’ these empirical data via behavioural rules of households. It computes spatially explicit household patterns, housing demands and residential vacancies. Based on three scenarios – population growth, stagnation and shrinkage – we show that population might stabilise within the coming years. The number of households is expected to further increase. Using the model, we demonstrate that a selective demolition of vacant housing stock can counteract the enormous oversupply of dwellings and better level out both housing demand and number of available flats.

Scenario simulation shows that the model can reproduce observed pattern of population, inner-urban migration and residential vacancy spatially explicit and thus can be applied for scenarios of demographic change in urban regions. RESMOBcity acts as a tool supporting to test hypothesis from social science research and allows the quantification of land use scenarios in urban regions based on household choices.

Software information:

Name of the software: RESMOBcity
Availability:

Year first available: 2009
Software required: Sun Java (JRE/JDK version 1.6 and higher)
Operation systems: Windows
Programming language: Java
License: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Binary Code License Agreement for the JAVA SE RUNTIME ENVIRONMENT (JRE) VERSION 6 and JAVAFX RUNTIME VERSION 1

Contact

Dagmar Haase dagmar.haase@ufz.de

Publication

Haase D, Lautenbach S, Seppelt R 2010. Applying social science concepts: modelling and simulating residential mobility in a shrinking city. Environmental Modelling and Software 25, 1225-1240.