@article {16411, title = {The complex interaction of agents and environments: An example in urban sprawl}, journal = {Proceedings of Agent Based Simulation}, year = {2002}, month = {2002///}, pages = {149 - 161}, abstract = {We present and evaluate a foundational agent-based model of land use change at therural-urban fringe within the context of a larger project that will link to surveys of the environmental and community preferences of residents with historical data on patterns of development. In this paper, we focus on the dynamics arising from a model of residential location resulting from preferences for services, density, and aesthetics focusing on the relationship between micro level preferences and policy relevant macro phenomena such as scattered development, largest city size, and the number of residential clusters. We consider two representations of agents{\textquoteright} utility functions {\textendash} one additively separable and one multiplicative {\textendash} to see if functional form has any impact on the dynamics of the system, and find that they produce similar results. Our analysis includes both representative agent runs, in which all agents have identical preferences, as well as runs in which the agents have diverse preferences. We find that diversity can increase sprawl through feedbacks associated with the spatial locations of services and agents. In addition, we examine cases in which the agents{\textquoteright} location decisions affect the aesthetic quality of neighboring sites and find that these feedbacks further exacerbate the sprawl effect. }, author = {Rand, William and Zellner,M and Page,S.E. and Riolo,R and Brown,D.G. and Fernandez,L.E.} }