Emerging urban dynamics and labor market change: an agent based simulation of recovery from a disaster

Urban disasters invariably involve destruction of capital stock. This, however, does not always elicit a corresponding flow response in terms of reduction of wages or employment. Urban recovery from a disaster is therefore dependent on the non-symmetrical interdependencies between stocks and flows. This chapter explores these interdependencies using an agent-based (AB) model that simulates urban dynamics post disaster. The model includes three interrelated sub-components that animate the dynamics of the housing market, labor market and land-use system. In these modules, the acts of autonomous and mobile urban residents represent flows while environmentally sensitive yet immobile spatial entities, such as buildings and jobs, represent stocks. The model is applied to a case study of a hypothetical earthquake in the central business district area of Jerusalem, Israel. The results highlight the asymmetrical relations between flows and stocks, with the worker/resident population adjusting much more quickly than residential units/jobs. This transforms the area into a suburban-like environment in which residential land-uses and commuting are much more common.