Doubling the Amount of Space

• Source Code for Location Model Same Income (542 KB)
• Shapefile (18 KB)

Up to this point, agents have clustered in the four most accessible areas as the system evolves. As noted above, this is a result of the agents’ space requirements and their income. As agents have relatively low space requirements, they can afford the average price of an area. However, if the agents space requirements are increased but their income is not, how does this pattern change? To see this effect, agents are given a new space requirement double that of the previous simulation as highlighted in Table 1. All the other parameters within the model were kept the same as in the previous simulation, thereby allowing for a comparison of the effect that different space ranges have on the spatial distribution of agents.

Table 1: Increasing the space requirements within the model for different types of agents.

Table 2 compares the average results from the original simulation (i.e. Table 2 from The Effects of Space and Income) to the one where the space requirements are doubled, and it is to be expected that the number of empty zones is less when space requirements are doubled (selected animations of doubling the space requirement can be seen below). This results from the agents’ ability to pay for a piece of land with a certain amount of money. Therefore increasing the agents demand for space but keeping the income range the same causes some the agents to move further away from the most accessible area where competition is more intense. The number of agents of both types searching is less when space requirements are low. This suggests that by increasing the agents’ space requirements, agents are being forced out of central areas due to more competition for space and as the areas are changing, the agents can no longer afford the location they first choose.

Table 2: Comparison of average results for agents with small and double space requirements with respect to the number of empty zones and the number of both residents and employers searching during 100 iterations.

The average distribution of agents at 100 iterations (Table 3) highlights that all the residents are being forced further from the centre compared to when space requirements are smaller (i.e. Table 3 from The Effects of Space and Income). This is especially the case for commerce residents who are being forced to occupy the most outward populated zone. This results because their preference for space is greater than any other residential group. Employers, as for when space requirements are smaller, are located within the 4 most accessible areas but their distribution changes. There are fewer employer agents of group service within the most accessible areas.

Table 3: The distribution of agents in different zones at time interval 100 when space requirements are doubled.

A selection animations up to 100 iterations: note how the distribution of agents changes as the space requirement is increased

Download zip file of images from model runs.

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