Urban Development triggered through residents behavior - simulation of urban policy impacts

Urban growth is a challenge for cities all over the world which calls for instruments to foster sustainable urban development. Urban development is triggered by dwelling behavior of the cities´ today´s residents and future residents from outside the urban region, targeting the city as future living and working area. Influencing this behavior through appropriate urban policies and related measures allows driving urban growth towards a resource efficient direction. To support policy decision making an agent based model (ABM) has been developed simulating urban dwellers´ behavior, where different scenarios can be established by adapting spatial attractiveness conditions which influence the dwellers´ housing decisions. The ABM tool has been elaborated and applied for different urban regions, first in Western Europe. This paper describes the modelling principles and the simulation tool as applied for emerging cities in Latin America.