| This study uses an agent-based modeling (ABM) approach to simulate residential dynamics in an area of Boston, a city that has increasingly experienced gentrification in the past decades. The model is instantiated using housing data from the City of Boston Assessing Department and uses simple decision-making rules for four classes of agents to simulate the area's residential dynamics. The model employs the consumption explanation of the cause of gentrification, which emphasizes the choices of individuals drawn to urban amenities, while testing the production explanation, which suggests that major investments from the public and private sphere attract and explain gentrification. Verification shows that the processes in the model work according to its construction, capture the system's emergent phenomena and that this ABM may be a valuable explanatory tool for understanding and learning about some processes underlying gentrification. |
