A review of the housing market-clearing process in integrated land-use and transport models

The land-use/transport interaction (LUTI) modeling framework has become the current state of best practice for analyzing the interdependency between the land-use and transportation systems. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the housing market-clearing mechanisms used in operational LUTI models. Market clearing is a critical component of modeling housing markets, but a systematic review and critique of the current state of the art have not previously been undertaken. In the review paper, the theoretical foundations for modeling household location choice are reviewed, including bid-rent and random utility theories. Five LUTI models are discussed in detail: two equilibrium models, MUSSA and RELU-TRAN, and three dynamic disequilibrium models, UrbanSim, ILUTE, and SimMobility. The discussion focuses on the following key points: the assumptions embedded in the models, the aggregation level of households and locations, computational cost and operationalization of the models. One of the challenges is that there are rarely any empirical studies that compare the performance of equilibrium and dynamic models in the same study context. Future research is recommended to empirically investigate the pros and cons of the two modeling approaches and compare the model performances for their representativeness of real-world behavior, computational efficiencies, and abilities for policy analysis. More sophisticated studies about the impacts of agents’ behavior on the housing market-clearing process are also recommended.