Behavioral approach to modeling residential mobility in the Prague metropolitan region

Residential mobility significantly influences all other urban processes: the real estate market, the location of economic activities and public services. Especially, the residential mobility influences the travel patterns and demand for transportation services. Therefore, modeling residential mobility should be regarded as the precondition for “smart” spatial and transportation planning. Recent approaches to modeling of urban processes regard the urban systems from the perspective of individual human actors, their preferences, decisions and activities. The micro-simulation random utility discrete choice models explicitly represent decision-making processes of individual actors in their individual contexts and allow the residential mobility factors to be analyzed on the level of individual actors. The paper describes the application of experimental microsimulation model on the study of residential mobility in the Prague metropolitan region. It examines existing data from the point of view of availability and suitability for micro-simulation modeling, provides technical guidance for the application of micro-simulation models for scientific research and the practice of urban planning and illustrates possible outcomes of the microsimulation modeling.