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ABSTRACT
Numerous cities in developing regions worldwide are expanding at a tremendous rate. This requires adequate strategies to address the needs of these growing cities with diverse populations. Nonetheless, the development of urban policies is often hampered by the lack of reliable data or insight in the socio-spatial dynamics of this urban expansion. This paper therefore presents ASSURE, a spatially and temporally explicit model that can simulate urban growth and intra-urban social segregation, taking into account alternative policy strategies and expected social dynamics. The model has a flexible structure that allows incorporating specific city conditions that influence residential decision-making and adapting the simulation to the data available. This, in combination with the transparent model structure, makes ASSURE a potentially valuable decision support tool for urban planning. The potential is demonstrated with an example where the urban growth of and social segregation in Kampala (Uganda) is simulated based on (semi-)quantitative and qualitative data for ca. 800 households collected through interviews. The results of the simulations show that depending on the scenario, the spatial segregation and accessibility problems will evolve highly differently.
Acknowledgments
The efforts, guidance and assistance of staff and student members of the Geography Department of the Makerere University during all field work missions are greatly appreciated. The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (Belgium) – (Research Grant 1512714N). The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their efforts and constructive comments which allowed us to improve the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.