A new urban paradigm pathways to sustainable development

We have also made available an
operating manual (Furtado et al. 2016, 2)
and an empirical expansion of the model
(Furtado and Eberhardt 2016a), including
a more detailed tax system.
However, a number of other policyoriented
analyses and applications that
are spatially rigorous could be easily
implemented, given SEAL’s framework:
• y demographic analysis: changing
fertility and/or mortality rates for
coming years as well as implementing
migration schemes (Billari, Ongaro,
and Prskawetz 2003; Silverman, Bijak,
Hilton, Cao, and Noble 2013);
• y investment in education: given that
agents in the model already have a
‘qualification’ variable—which is, at
the moment, fixed throughout the
simulation—but that could easily
be a result of endogenous increase;
• y transport analysis: adding route
possibilities to the current model.
Geocoded addresses for firms and
households are already implemented;
• y corporate innovation, whereby
businesses could generate more than
one homogeneous product. Currently,
businesses are designed to have an
inventory of available products, so
far containing a single product;
• y urban hierarchy and urban integration
with likely urban theory development:
“
Governance of cities
is a complex matter.
It involves heterogeneous
citizens and interests, a
number of institutions
and values, and
businesses of
all denominations.
using endogenous economic working
pools, conditioned to a reasonable
daily commuting time;
• y macroeconomic analysis: implementing
a credit market (on top of already
existing ‘savings’ accounts) and an
intermediate sector, with businesses
as well as government as buyers; and
• y a more detailed tax
system implementation.
It is relevant to point out that all those
analyses would be made while keeping
the other modules intact. That is, while
a modeller is evaluating a change of a
specific tax policy, the outputs in terms
of unemployment, level of consumption,
activities in the real estate market and time
commuting, to name a few, are continuously
being computed and reported. An exact—
although simple—example of that is
presented in Furtado and Eberhardt (2016b).
Final considerations
This article provided a brief overview
of an agent-based model framework
(SEAL), presenting its initial and planned
applications for policymaking within the
complex systems framework.
We can report some advantages 5 and some
limitations of this methodology as a policy
tool to empower smart cities governance.
Rapid prototyping and ex ante policy
evaluation are some of the first gains
for urban governance. Given a solid
foundation of previous work, a small
team (under six members) can provide
good insights into the effects of a given
proposed policy within a matter of days.
That is, the team can design additional
modules and simulations to have a better
understanding of policy impacts across a
number of indicators and specific urban
areas prior to actual implementation.
Such rapid prototyping practices may
even be tools for real-time, ‘what if?’-type
live meetings in which interested actors
may suggest tests or changes to the
simulation team.
Another positive factor of having an ABM
framework is its flexibility. Depending on
the shifting interests of governance at any
particular time, different emphasis can be
applied to evolve the platform. The fact
that the platform is additive and modular
means that specific branches can be more
(or less) developed than others, while the
system continues to work in full harmony.
This enables a more comprehensive
approach to policy evaluation, as opposed
to sectoral, isolated analysis.
This approach also has the advantage
of being explicitly spatial, dynamic
and with an emphasis on individual,
local, heterogeneous agents and,
more importantly, their interactions.
This enables an emphasis of the micro
scale, rather than working on aggregate
measures. All of that is in tune with
the description of cities (and their
governance, obviously) as complex
systems (Bettencourt 2015).
Photo: Kevin.ventus. Town Hall of Sydney, Australia, 2014 .
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