Modelling the impacts of urban upgrading on population dynamics

Authored by Johannes Flacke, Nina Schwarz, Richard Sliuzas

Date Published: 2016

DOI: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2015.12.009

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: Repast

Model Documentation: ODD Flow charts

Model Code URLs: https://www.comses.net/codebases/4276/releases/1.1.0/

Abstract

Due to the rapid pace of urbanization, cities in the global South are growing with most of this growth occurring in informal settlements. Urban upgrading aims to improve living conditions in such settlements by improving the infrastructure but might lead to unexpected effects such as income segregation. InformalCity, a spatially explicit agent-based model, simulates the implications of urban upgrading in an artificial city. Our simulation experiments show that maintenance of the upgraded infrastructure, the scope of upgrading efforts, and timing (early vs. late investments) affect infrastructure quality, housing development and income segregation. However, we also find that urban upgrading interventions can have contradictory effects; for example, maintenance increases the quality of infrastructure and income segregation. Thus, policy makers need to establish clear targets for upgrading projects, and empirical evaluation studies should consider studying the impacts of urban upgrading on an entire city's development rather than limiting them to informal settlements. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Tags

emergence Informal Settlements Tanzania Africa Cities Simulation-models Dar-es-salaam