Individual Contacts, Collective Patterns - Prato 1975-97, a Story of Interactions

Abstract

This article presents an agent-based model (ABM) of an Italian textile district where thousands of small firms specialize in particular phases of fabrics production. It is an empirical model because it reconstructs the communications between firms when they arrange production chains. In their turn, production chains reflect into the pattern of road traffic in the geographical areas where the district extends. It is a methodological model because it aims to show that ABMs can be used to reconstruct a web of movements in geographical space. ABMs are proposed as a tool for Hagerstrand’s “time-geography”.