Coincidentally, I mentioned this recently in response to a thread about how traffic jams form: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2295135

I picked up the book over ten years ago and it has had a huge influence on the way I think about things.

Pick up Thomas Schelling's Micro Motives and Macro Behavior; he originated many of these models (the most mind-blowing to me was that a small segregation preference among individuals balloons into way more segregation than was desired just because of physical constraints inherent in the geometry of neighborhoods).

It's in my back log.

I did a course on modelling complex systems for my honours studies; this was one of the recommended readings. I'm glad I bought it.

Most books about systems modelling refer to one of the commercial modelling programs. Or they are quite generic and hand-wavy. The nice thing about TTATJ is that the software (NetLogo) is downloadable[1]. The book is on the Kindle too, which is convenient.

[1] http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

I love modeling traffic jams. Was one of my first hands-on experiments with NetLogo.

If you're like me, you might find interesting this recent paper on the topic of the economics of parking: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2277553