The Dortmund Housing Market Model: A Monte Carlo Simulation of a Regional Housing Market

Abstract

Work on the Dortmund housing market model began in 1977 at the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning of the University of Dortmund as part of a larger research project supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. This ongoing project is directed towards the investigation of the long-term interactions between economic (sectoral, technological) change, locational choice, mobility, and land use in urban regions. For this purpose, a spatially multilevel dynamic simulation model of regional development was designed to simulate, within a concrete regional context, the location decisions of industry, residential developers, and households, the resulting migration and travel patterns, the land use development, and the impacts of public programs and policies in the fields of employment, housing, and infrastructure. It was decided to use the urban region of Dortmund as a study region, including Dortmund and 18 neighboring communities with a total population of 2.4 million.