An agent-based approach to procedural city generation incorporating Land Use and Transport Interaction models

TL;DR

This paper presents an agent-based system for procedural city generation that integrates Land Use and Transport Interaction models to create realistic urban layouts with zoning and accessibility features.

Contribution

It introduces a novel environment representation combining road graphs with land use models and demonstrates an incremental city-building process starting from an empty map.

Findings

Successfully generates realistic city layouts with diverse land uses.

Efficiently combines road networks and land use data in a unified environment.

Replicates key urban features like zoning and accessibility.

Abstract

We apply the knowledge of urban settings established with the study of Land Use and Transport Interaction (LUTI) models to develop reward functions for an agent-based system capable of planning realistic artificial cities. The system aims to replicate in the micro scale the main components of real settlements, such as zoning and accessibility in a road network. Moreover, we propose a novel representation for the agent's environment that efficiently combines the road graph with a discrete model for the land. Our system starts from an empty map consisting only of the road network graph, and the agent incrementally expands it by building new sites while distinguishing land uses between residential, commercial, industrial, and recreational.