An agent-based model to simulate the feedback effect between traffic-induced air pollution and urban structure

A spatial complexity currently of increasing concern is the relation between the
internal structure of urban areas and traffic‐induced air pollution. Urban air pollution
has severe impacts on the environment and on human health with traffic being its
major source. Air pollution from traffic varies locally within the city depending on
traffic patterns that arise from the spatial arrangement of land uses and subsequent
travel demand across time. In this paper, we contribute a dynamic agent‐based
residential model (ABM) applied to 2D theoretical space based on micro‐economic
principles with local exposure and pollution externalities arising from car commuting
traffic and an endogenous road network. We analyse the effects of households’
aversion to generating and being exposed to local traffic pollution on emerging land
use patterns and pollution distribution. The focus is thereby set on endogenising local
health but also global environmental concerns of traffic‐induced air pollution in
location choice. The ABM framework allows discussing the spatial interactions
against the background of pollution‐related (e.g., pollutant diffusion, cold‐start
emissions, additional emissions through traffic congestion) and preference‐related
(e.g., exposure during the commute versus at the residential location, size of the
impact neighbourhood) framework conditions and planning approaches (localized
lump‐sum taxes, cordon tolls, flat taxes). We discuss the stability and performance
criteria of the resulting cities, which are on the one hand city aggregates (e.g., total
emissions, total exposure, spatial extent of the urban area), but on the other hand
and more importantly location‐dependent disaggregates (local patterns of land
rents, exposure, green spaces, design of the road network). Thus, our paper interlinks
pollution‐related concerns and urban structures from a health and environmental
perspective, which take place at different spatial scales (different radii of interaction)
and thereby ties in with the compaction‐sprawl debate in the literature.