Examining the spatial simulation and land-use reorganisation mechanism of agricultural suburban settlements using a cellular-automata and agent-based model: Six settlements in China

Peri-urban land-use development is an important representation of urban-rural system evolution in developing countries. As the modern agriculture industry promotes rapid spatial pattern changes, modelling this phenom-enon is of considerable interest to urban planners and city managers. Several methods have been developed to simulate the dynamics of land-use changes. However, the complexity of such dynamics can impede the usefulness of simulation methods. In this paper, a new cellular-automata and agent-based model (CA-ABM) is introduced into the spatial simulation and reorganisation of peri-urban areas. This simulation and predictive model uses the geographic information system platform and cellular automata tool. The basic components of this dynamic bottom-up approach are the actors in land-use development. Using six settlements from plains, hilly, and mountainous areas as examples combined with field investigation, remote sensing images, official land-use planning, and other data, this study analysed land-use evolution under the influence of farmers, developers, and government agents to illustrate the spatial simulation and land-use reorganisation mechanism of agricultural suburban settlements. Compared with previous studies, this study shows that the CA-ABM can reflect the dy-namic behaviour of agents and successfully fuses peri-urban settlement attributes and spatially accurate simu-lation. Simultaneously, the proposed spatial optimisation mechanism provides a reference for the spatial reorganisation of agricultural suburban zones worldwide.