Social Neighbourhoods in FEARLUS

FEARLUS uses social rather than physical neighbourhoods when land managers imitate one another. The justification for this is that when sharing information, land managers will not just refer to the land parcels that share a border with each other. When an imitating land manager gathers information from the space during the land use decision-making process, they gather information on all land parcels owned by land managers who own neighbouring land parcels, not just on neighbouring land parcels. The following diagram illustrates the difference:

The black border shows the social neighbourhood (von Neumann) of the farm coloured in burgundy.	The black border shows the physical neighbourhood (von Neumann) of the farm coloured in burgundy.