M6. Urban socio-demographic evolution and transitions, new modelling and simulation paradigms

As urban population grows, urban design and infrastructure planning are required in order to maintain or improve the quality of living environments. Such planning requires the capacity to assess and compare the impact of competing land use policies and infrastructure development. Departing from traditional trend-based analyses there is a growing need for new modelling and simulation paradigms to assist research and decision-making in this area. In recent years, micro-simulation and agent-based modelling techniques, often associated with synthetic population approaches, have been used to re-create in silico the observed complex patterns emerging from social responses to changes in public policies or infrastructure investment. A key issue is to identify relevant factors that determine individual and household’s decision-making processes and then to find statistically robust ways to associate them with socio-demographic transitions. In times when demographic census is increasingly seen as an excessive financial burden by many countries, innovative ways to better simulate urban socio-demographic evolution and transitions are urgently needed.

This session aims at presenting most recent advances in dynamic modelling and simulation of socio-demographic evolution and transitions. We invite papers addressing theoretical issues, presenting methodological advances or describing recent case-studies on modelling of urban socio-demographic evolution and transitions. Proposed topics and methods include but are not limited to: