Abstract for: Application of Urban Model to Shrinking Cities with Population Decline

Recently, population decline has begun in some countries and regions, and it is expected that shrinking cities with population decline will become a serious issue on a global scale. Many cities should be realized as sustainable cities for future population decline, and need to analyze the impacts of policy implementation considering long-term changes in urban activities of shrinking cities, using the urban models. However, many urban models are developed assuming that cities will grow, and it is hard to simulate the policy impacts in the shrinking cities using them. Therefore, this study aims to modify the MARS, one of the urban models, to consider shrinking cities with population decline and apply it to those cities. We also simulate the MARS to assess the impact of policy implementation on land use and transportation sectors in shrinking cities. This study selects the city of Chiba, Japan, as a case study of shrinking cities. As a work in progress, this study has included the cohort module to MARS and subdivided the Resident estimation module to represent shrinking cities with population decline in urban activities and simulated changes in the number of residents considering a trend of population decline.