Welcome to the UrbanSim Community Web Portal

UrbanSim is a software-based simulation system for supporting planning and analysis of urban development, incorporating the interactions between land use, transportation, the economy, and the environment. It is intended for use by Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), cities, counties, non-governmental organizations, researchers and students interested in exploring the effects of infrastructure and policy choices on community outcomes such as motorized and non-motorized accessibility, housing affordability, greenhouse gas emissions, and the protection of open space and environmentally sensitive habitats. The UrbanSim Overview page contains a summary of its design and features. Detailed descriptions are available in the Documentation and ResearchPapers on this site.

News

January 26, 2010	New survey shows UrbanSim used by far more MPOs in the US than any other Land Use Model
January 14, 2010	UrbanSim Forums are now open for business. These provide threaded discussions, polls and other features.
January 12, 2010	Preliminary planning for a 2010 UrbanSim Conference is underway.
January 12, 2010	Beta Version of New OPUS/UrbanSim Installer is now posted (see the bottom of WindowsInstaller for info and link).
December 9, 2009	Draft documentation of the parcel version of UrbanSim is now posted.
December 9, 2009	Draft documentation of the zone version of UrbanSim is now posted.

Background

UrbanSim was initially designed and implemented in the mid-1990's, and has been continuously refined and re-engineered since then. A Core Development Team coordinates the development of the system, and a growing community of Research Collaborators contributes to the project. Its development has been made possible by generous support from the funders listed below. It is freely available on the Download Page as open source software using the GPL license. We do ask that users register on this website before downloading, so we can maintain some minimal information about the user community. Since its initial release in 1998, UrbanSim has increasingly been adopted for operational planning use in the U.S. and in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in planning agencies and in university research and educational settings. The user community and research collaborators directly and indirectly support the application and refinement of UrbanSim. This interactive web site provides a virtual meeting ground for users and developers of the system, with approximately half from the USA, and half from a rapidly growing list of countries:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, USA, Vietnam

In addition to these current funders, we wish to acknowledge numerous Previous Funders that have supported the UrbanSim project.