AESOP 18th Meeting TG Planning & Complexity

Description

Title - Reinterpreting Procedural Utility in Land Use Analyses: A Land Use Simulation Model
Abstract – There has been an ongoing dichotomy between the process and consequence based analyses in the economics and decision making fields; this extends to land use frameworks analysis. In fact, such analyses have been mostly concerned with the consequential aspect of acquiring land; they are concerned with the instrumental land attributes. In other words, the land use analyses are more concerned with the instrumental benefit gained in terms of output utility. This utilitarian implementation extends to the land use simulation methods as tools of understanding the land use dynamics. In such models, land attributes are used to calculate an output utility which dictates how decisions affecting land use are made. Nevertheless, from a complexity perspective, the analysis of land use transformations should not only consider the physical attributes, but also the processes of change. In that sense, the land use analyses should consider the counterpart of the consequence oriented output utility; they should consider the procedural utility concept. Procedural utility is generally defined as the value of the process of reaching an end goal. It defines utility as the happiness acquired during such process which leads to a sense of well-being (Frey 2008). However, within land use & land markets, such procedural utility has not been clearly defined and explored.
In that essence, a research problem can be defined where the procedural utility is not incorporated in land use analyses; they are more focused on the output utility and land attributes analysis. Hence, this paper aims to re-interpret procedural utility in land use change analysis based on the fairness of land markets’ price allocation mechanisms. The paper also aims to investigate the implications of considering procedural utility in land use transformation through an Agent Based (AB) simulation. In such simulation, on the one hand, land plots are located within different markets each with its procedural utility. This utility is then used to make residential relocation decisions. On the other hand, the agents’ procedural utility preferences are approached in a game format; i.e. actual individuals (users) can provide inputs that iterate the agents’ procedural utility preferences. This gives a further chance to explore the interpretive nature of such utility and its effect on cities’ land-use transformations.
To sum up, this paper introduces an AB simulation model for land use transformations. It attaches a procedural utility to a set of hypothetical land plots and provides the user with control over the procedural utility preferences of agents to explore their effect on land use transformations.

Period	7 Nov 2019 → 8 Nov 2019
Event type	Conference
Location	Lisbon, PortugalShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International