# GenWorld: Empirically Grounded Urban Simulation Infrastructure for Scalable LLM-Agent Studies

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.27650 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.27650/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 26 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Jun 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Multimodal and embodied agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/multimodal-and-embodied-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06770/) (2023)
- [WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13854/) (2023)
- [Gemma 3 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19786/) (2025)
- [MetaGPT: Meta Programming for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00352/) (2023)
- [The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07864/) (2023)
- [AgentBench: Evaluating LLMs as Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03688/) (2023)
- [AgentSociety: Large-Scale Simulation of LLM-Driven Generative Agents Advances Understanding of Human Behaviors and Society](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08691/) (2025)
- [AgentScope: A Flexible yet Robust Multi-Agent Platform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14034/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models as Urban Residents: An LLM Agent Framework for Personal Mobility Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14744/) (2024)
- [SocioVerse: A World Model for Social Simulation Powered by LLM Agents and A Pool of 10 Million Real-World Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10157/) (2025)
- [OpenCity: A Scalable Platform to Simulate Urban Activities with Massive LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21286/) (2024)
- [CityBench: Evaluating the Capabilities of Large Language Models for Urban Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13945/) (2024)
- [Be More Real: Travel Diary Generation Using LLM Agents and Individual Profiles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18932/) (2024)
- [TrajLLM: A Modular LLM-Enhanced Agent-Based Framework for Realistic Human Trajectory Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18712/) (2025)
- [On the limits of agency in agent-based models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.10568/) (2024)
- [Data-driven generation of spatio-temporal routines in human mobility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.05952/) (2016)
- [Toward LLM-Agent-Based Modeling of Transportation Systems: A Conceptual Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06681/) (2024)
- [GATSim: Urban Mobility Simulation with Generative Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23306/) (2025)
- [A Large Language Model for Feasible and Diverse Population Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04196/) (2025)
- [Learning Universal Human Mobility Patterns with a Foundation Model for Cross-domain Data Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15779/) (2025)
- [VoxCity: A Seamless Framework for Open Geospatial Data Integration, Grid-Based Semantic 3D City Model Generation, and Urban Environment Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13934/) (2025)
- [MobileCity: An Efficient Framework for Large-Scale Urban Behavior Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16946/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

LLM-agent simulation faces a joint grounding and scaling problem: agents should act in environments that reflect real urban constraints, yet direct online LLM calls for city-scale populations are computationally prohibitive. We present GenWorld, an empirically grounded urban simulation infrastructure that combines a building-level synthetic city, a structured agent-environment interface, and offline compilation of LLM-derived decision signals into lookup policies for scalable rollout. In a reference instantiation for Higashihiroshima, Japan, GenWorld grounds 196,608 synthetic residents in census and geospatial data, validates demographic consistency against census tabulations, and uses YJMob100K mobile-phone data as a commuting-distance diagnostic. We demonstrate the infrastructure through three reproducible cases: a full-city weekday rollout, a weekday-weekend behavioral contrast, and a warning-response perturbation with auditable replanning traces. These cases support GenWorld as a reproducible platform for grounded and scalable LLM-agent studies, while calibrated forecasting for traffic, evacuation, or policy outcomes remains future work.
