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Abstract
VU Cities - Sydney is a spatial computable general equilibrium (SCGE) model of the Sydney - Newcastle - Wollongong region, which encompasses Australia's largest city and is home to around 5 million people. The model is intended to be used to simulate the impacts of policies, planning and public investments in the urban and transport sectors. We demonstrate its potential with an analysis of the spatial impacts of hypothetical transport policies that simultaneously reduce travel times by rail and increase private vehicle operating costs. We show how these policies increase the centralisation of employment in central Sydney and increase residential densities along train lines at the expense of outer areas that are highly car-dependent. VU Cities - Sydney has a detailed spatial structure with 363 employment and residential zones. Households make discrete choices of their places of work, residence and industry of employment. They make continuous choices over the consumption of tradable and non-tradable goods and services. The model allows for localised spillovers of both productivity and residential amenity. It is calibrated using census and land use planning data together with travel costs derived from the New South Wales Strategic Transport Model.