@inproceedings{ye-etal-2026-mobilecity,
title = "{M}obile{C}ity: An Efficient Framework for Large-Scale Urban Behavior Simulation",
author = "Ye, Xiaotong and
Bougie, Nicolas and
Yamasaki, Toshihiko and
Watanabe, Narimawa",
editor = {Matusevych, Yevgen and
Eryi{\u{g}}it, G{\"u}l{\c{s}}en and
Aletras, Nikolaos},
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 19th Conference of the {E}uropean Chapter of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 5: Industry Track)",
month = mar,
year = "2026",
address = "Rabat, Morocco",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.eacl-industry.21/",
pages = "287--303",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-384-5",
abstract = "Generative agents offer promising capabilities for simulating realistic urban behaviors. However, existing methods often rely on static profiles, oversimplified behavioral logic, and synchronous inference pipelines that hinder scalability. We present MobileCity, a lightweight generative-agent framework for city-scale simulation powered by cognitively-grounded generative agents. Each agent acts based on its needs, habits, and obligations, evolving over time. Agents are initialized from survey-based demographic data and navigate a realistic multimodal transportation network spanning multiple types of vehicles. To achieve scalability, we introduce asynchronous batched LLM inference during action selection and a low-token communication mechanism. Experiments with 4,000 agents demonstrate that MobileCity generates more human-like urban dynamics than baselines while maintaining high computational efficiency. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/Tony-Yip/MobileCity."
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<abstract>Generative agents offer promising capabilities for simulating realistic urban behaviors. However, existing methods often rely on static profiles, oversimplified behavioral logic, and synchronous inference pipelines that hinder scalability. We present MobileCity, a lightweight generative-agent framework for city-scale simulation powered by cognitively-grounded generative agents. Each agent acts based on its needs, habits, and obligations, evolving over time. Agents are initialized from survey-based demographic data and navigate a realistic multimodal transportation network spanning multiple types of vehicles. To achieve scalability, we introduce asynchronous batched LLM inference during action selection and a low-token communication mechanism. Experiments with 4,000 agents demonstrate that MobileCity generates more human-like urban dynamics than baselines while maintaining high computational efficiency. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/Tony-Yip/MobileCity.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T MobileCity: An Efficient Framework for Large-Scale Urban Behavior Simulation
%A Ye, Xiaotong
%A Bougie, Nicolas
%A Yamasaki, Toshihiko
%A Watanabe, Narimawa
%Y Matusevych, Yevgen
%Y Eryiğit, Gülşen
%Y Aletras, Nikolaos
%S Proceedings of the 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 5: Industry Track)
%D 2026
%8 March
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Rabat, Morocco
%@ 979-8-89176-384-5
%F ye-etal-2026-mobilecity
%X Generative agents offer promising capabilities for simulating realistic urban behaviors. However, existing methods often rely on static profiles, oversimplified behavioral logic, and synchronous inference pipelines that hinder scalability. We present MobileCity, a lightweight generative-agent framework for city-scale simulation powered by cognitively-grounded generative agents. Each agent acts based on its needs, habits, and obligations, evolving over time. Agents are initialized from survey-based demographic data and navigate a realistic multimodal transportation network spanning multiple types of vehicles. To achieve scalability, we introduce asynchronous batched LLM inference during action selection and a low-token communication mechanism. Experiments with 4,000 agents demonstrate that MobileCity generates more human-like urban dynamics than baselines while maintaining high computational efficiency. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/Tony-Yip/MobileCity.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.eacl-industry.21/
%P 287-303
Markdown (Informal)
[MobileCity: An Efficient Framework for Large-Scale Urban Behavior Simulation](https://aclanthology.org/2026.eacl-industry.21/) (Ye et al., EACL 2026)
ACL