Using Multi-agent System for Residential Expansion Models——A Case Study of Hongshan District,Wuhan City

Residential expansion is gaining more and more attention from government authorities and urban planners.However,most of the current urban models focus heavily on presenting economic,political and ecological objectives of urban development,while seldom taking the effects of human behavior into consideration.Multi-agent systems for land use/cover change(MAS/LUCC),which mainly concern the behavioral effects of stakeholders on the processes of land use/cover change,are promising to fill the gap.This article,based on the concepts of MAS/LUCC model,con-structs a multi-agent system for residential expansion model(MAS/RE)through the analysis of the behavior of gov-ernment authorities and households.The model takes complex human actions into account,namely urban master plan-ning,planning review and approval,policies of traffic,economy and environment,location and allocation choices of the households and their interrelationships.Taking Hongshan District of Wuhan City,Hubei Province as an illustration,the model is implemented on Arc/info platform to simulate residential expansion between 1996 and 2002.The study result shows that the model is suitable for understanding the process of residential expansion with the effects of human actions,and is especially effective for its capacity in presenting spatio-temporal and behavioral complexity.Therefore,the model can be a reference for policy-making for government authorities and urban planners.

Location patterns of urban industry in Shanghai and implications for sustainability

China＇s economy has undergone rapid transition and industrial restructuring. The term ＂urban industry＂ describes a particular type of industry within Chinese cities experiencing restructuring. Given the high percentage of industrial firms that have either closed or relo- cated from city centres to the urban fringe and beyond, emergent global cities such as Shanghai, are implementing strategies for local economic and urban development, which involve urban industrial upgrading numerous firms in the city centre and urban fringe. This study aims to analyze the location patterns of seven urban industrial sectors within the Shanghai urban region using 2008 micro-geography data. To avoid Modifiable Areal Unit Problem （MAUP） issue, four distance-based measures including nearest neighbourhood analysis, Kernel density estimation, K-function and co-location quotient have been exten- sively applied to analyze and compare the concentration and co-location between the seven sectors. The results reveal disparate patterns varying with distance and interesting co-location as well. The results are as follows： the city centre and the urban fringe have the highest intensity of urban industrial firms, but the zones with 20-30 km from the city centre is a watershed for most categories; the degree of concentration varies with distance, weaker at shorter distance, increasing up to the maximum distance of 30 km and then decreasing until 50 km; for all urban industries, there are three types of patterns, mixture of clustered, random and dispersed distribution at a varied range of distances. Consequently, this paper argues that the location pattern of urban industry reflects the stage-specific industrial restructuring and spatial transformation, conditioned by sustainability objectives.