Development of Agent-Based Model for Simulation on Residential Mobility Affected by Downtown Regeneration Policy

In the current decades, compact city becomes a new concern of urban planning among most of Japanese cities. Some local governments in Japan target to realize the conception of compact city pattern through policy intervention, such as encourage households remove from suburban to downtown and then relieve the decrease of population in urban center areas. Recently one of such kind residential policy is argued by local government in Kanazawa city, Japan. This policy manages to attract and encourage households remove to downtown by offering a local housing allowance. The contribution of this work is that we developed an agent-based Household Residential Relocation Model (HRRM) for visualizing the effect of this residential policy. HRRM is built on household interaction through housing relocation choice and policy attitude, and thereby it can simulate the diversified decisions of households in all their lifecycle stages. Through the simulation of HRRM the effectiveness of this residential policy can be visualized and hereafter helps local government to view the effect of the residential policy.