Simulation of the Dissemination of Slums in Cities through Reactive Agents

In the majority of the great cities of the third world and developing countries the growing rate of slums is pressuring the public services (water supply, energy, transport, sanitation, etc.), and bringing violence, traffic of drugs, etc., in summary, degrading the entire standard of life of these cities. Building scenarios related to the growing of existing slums, the birth of new ones, and their evolution would be very useful for urban planning and for the elaboration of social policies aiming to minimize the impact caused by the uncontrolled growing of slums. In this paper we present a multi-agent system based on a very simple reactive agent systems paradigm, in order to simulate the dynamics of land-use in a urban environment, particularly in which respect slum quarters. We have also, implemented a prototype of the system in NetLogo, a multi-agent programmable modelling environment.