Houston-Galveston Area Council 2025 Regional Growth Forecast ...

Developing the Forecast
This forecast represents H-GAC's first full-scale, small-area forecasting effort using two new modeling
resources. The first resource is a regional econometric model acquired from Regional
Economic Models, Inc. (REMI). REMI is a nationally established model that considers the economic
interaction between the region as a whole and the rest of the nation. REMI also considers how
each county's demographic profile will change over time.
The second resource is the UrbanSim model, developed by the Center for Urban Simulation and
Policy Analysis at the University of Washington. UrbanSim is designed to help metropolitan
areas study interactions between land use and the transportation network.
Using the REMI model, H-GAC produced moderate
and aggressive county-level growth scenarios
for population, households, and
employment. During the second stage of the
forecasting process, H-GAC used the UrbanSim
model to allocate the county-level results to
smaller units of geography. UrbanSim simulated
the types of residential and commercial
land development patterns that would
emerge during a 25-year period.
The model placed "new" workers and "new" jobs in locations across the region based on patterns
of household income, job type, and the region's transportation network. UrbanSim also
incorporated a wide variety of other inputs that describe potential land use for small areas.
These include property databases from county appraisal districts, as well as information about
the region's physical features.
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