Abstract for: The Dynamics of Information Sharing: A First Step to Fight Urban Blight

The deterioration of living conditions within metropolitan areas presents a constant and costly challenge to city governments across the United States. Decaying housing quality and conditions, which eventually lead to a phenomenon known as urban blight are consuming human resources and budgets of already financially stretched cities of all sizes. City governments are relaying on innovative organizational and technological solutions for tackling urban blight and suppress its consequences. On the other side, researchers had studied the urban decay phenomenon using System Dynamics as a method for modeling and simulating the endogenous and exogenous forces interacting in an urban setting and that lead to stagnation, decay and eventually blight. The purpose of this study is to analyze whether information sharing among municipal entities and external partners could be a contributing factor in slowing down the decaying process of houses in an urban setting.