In any case, the reader is encouraged to carefully examine all assumptions, challenge them, and perhaps extend the model to incorporate assumptions that are more plausible in his/her view.

This seems particularly true for the industrial sector, which has no need for consumers to be nearby. For instance, companies also wish to pay less rent or property tax, and so alternatively one could argue that they would be seeking the least expensive piece of land to occupy. The validity of this assumption in a real-world setting is worthy of skepticism. If there is more money in a certain area, then there are more affluent people to spend that money on goods and services. This may seem irrational at first, but the assumption this model makes is that jobs move toward where the wealth is. When a new place of employment comes into the world, it randomly samples some number of locations (controlled by the NUMBER-OF-TESTS slider), and chooses the one with the highest price (i.e. These people want to live near to jobs, but also consider the price (cost of living) and quality of prospective locations. People (shown as small blue and pink squares) move in and move out. Job sites (shown as red circles on the map) are created and destroyed.

The model ultimately shows the segregation of populations based on income, the clustering of services in more affluent areas, and how people's attitude can lead either to a cluster condition (emphasis on proximity), or a condition of sprawl (emphasis on cost or quality). These same properties then change based on where the different populations settle. It models the growth of two populations, one rich and one poor, who settle based on three properties of the landscape: the perceived quality, the cost of living, and the proximity to services (large red dots).

This model explores residential land-usage patterns from an economic perspective, using the socio-economic status of the agents to determine their preferences for choosing a location to live. Do you have questions or comments about this model?

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