skfagyemang/TI-City-Model

The repository contains an urban expansion model developed to predict future residential development in an African city. # TI-City-Model ### What is it? The repository contains an urban expansion model developed to predict future residential development in an African city. The model, which is named TI-City, combines agent-based and cellular automata modelling techniques to predict the geospatial behaviour of key urban development actors, including households, real estate developers and government. To demonstrate the utility of the model, it has been applied to Accra city-region, Ghana, which is one of the largest city-regions in Africa. See Agyemang et al. (2022) for the underlying paper. The model can be useful to African urban studies scholars, environmental and climate scientists, as well as city planners and urban policy makers in Africa. The model is implemented in NetLogo programming platform. The "TI-Model.zip" file contains the model and data for Accra. There are two versions of the model: - "TI-City_validation", which contains parameterization used to validate the model; and - "TI-City_prediction2030", which contains parameterization used to predict urban expansion of Accra up to 2030. ### How it works TI-City has several key parameters. This includes: 1. A development control parameter, which accounts for diverse regulatory contexts; 2. Projected market demand for plots from households; 3. Estimated share of households in low-, middle-, and high-income classes; 4. Estimated demand for plots from real estate developers; 5. Estimated share of real estate developers targeting middle and high income buyers; 6. Land prices and affordability 7. Utility of land parcels; and 8. The sensitivity of development to slope. The model computes the suitability and utility of a given parcel for each income group by considering the geographical characteristics of the parcel. In calculating utility, the model accounts for the parcel’s geographical characteristics weighted differently depending on the income group of prospective inhabitants. The utility is dynamically updated …