Editing Land-use forecasting (section)

== University of North Carolina ==

A group at Chapel Hill, mainly under the leadership of Stuart Chapin, began its work with simple analysis devices somewhat similar to those used in games. Results include Chapin (1965), Chapin and H. C. Hightower (1966) and Chapin and Weiss (1968). That group subsequently focused on (1) the ways in which individuals make tradeoffs in selecting residential property, (2) the roles of developers and developer decisions in the urban development process, and (3) information about choices obtained from survey research. Lansing and Muller (1964 and 1967) at the Survey Research Center worked in cooperation with the Chapel Hill Group in developing some of this latter information.

The first work was on simple, probabilistic growth models. It quickly moved from this style to game-like interviews to investigate preferences for housing. Persons interviewed would be given “money” and a set of housing attributes – sidewalks, garage, numbers of rooms, lot size, etc. How do they spend their money? This is an early version of the game The Sims. The work also began to examine developer behavior, as mentioned. (See: Kaiser 1972).