Current means for managing human activities in geographical space, specially industrial clusters, are found to be unsatisfactory. This mainly due to too narrow and hard approaches based on a reactive paradigm. As a remedy a new emeging researh field, i.e. Participatory Anticipatory Rule Based Socio-Spatial Simulation Systems (PARBS4), is proposed. Possibilities for advancing this new field, along with some of the gaps that may need to be filled, are identified. Specific combinations of such possibilities are proposed, along with the criteria that could be used to evaluate them. The paper closes with a discussion around the kind of international interdisciplinary research programme whose pursuit could lead to the development of PARBS4 as a cognate field.