Journal of Urban Planning and Development

This paper presents an alternative project delivery system where there is a need for mass production of housing units while, at the same time, allowing recipients to finish the units in their own way to avoid the problem of them redoing the work if the units are not what they really need. Large numbers of the recipients of governmental houses in Kuwait tend to remodel their newly-awarded houses to fit their needs. When carried out on a large scale, this represents a waste of resources on public funding and imposes costs on the occupants of the government housing units. As a result, this paper suggests that the National Housing Authority (NHA) in Kuwait should consider delivering a “partially constructed houses system” to avoid the substantial rebuilding activities carried out by a large number of occupants. This study documents the effect of the partially constructed housing approach on reducing the waiting period and cost of construction, and on meeting recipients’ expectations. In addition, the study recommends different alternative options for when construction should be stopped by the NHA and then continued by the recipients to complete the houses to their own satisfaction.

The fact that relationships at global levels have increased necessitates redefinition of the roles of nations, regions, and metropolitan areas. In recent years, during the economic transportation process experienced on a global scale, the traditional role of cities has been changing, and preferences about location selections, which are related to the requirements of urban functions, have displayed changes as well. In this study, the objective is to ascertain the determining characteristics of decisions about location choice by foreign direct investors in Istanbul. The study is based on a sample of 100 companies that were surveyed in 2002. The ranking of location factors has been analyzed using not only variance of means but also principal components factor analysis. The result of the analysis verifies that the processes which influence location choice in Istanbul are similar to those found in other related studies. Since the beginning of the 1990s, Istanbul has become the hub of a vast hinterland extending from the Balkans to the Caucuses and represents a prime focus for foreign investment. For this reason, it is very significant to know the location choice criteria sought especially in the regions of Istanbul, where foreign capital is to be invested, in order to attract foreign-owned companies in the industrial and service sector. In this study, the criteria to which the foreign-owned investments in the industrial and service sector attach significance in location choice are set for each sector.

The concept of sustainable development is now valued to be fundamental to most issues concerning human activities for development. As sustainable development requires balancing conflicting requirements, rational decision making is necessary to achieve sustainability. Simulation models to assess and forecast sustainability can aid rational decision making. In the context of human settlements, human-nature interactions need to be considered in an integrated manner to build appropriate simulation models. The integrated model framework proposed here serves as a base for such simulation models. The model framework is based on the premise that a community’s attitude and its living environment determine human settlement sustainability. A generic model design comprising fundamental components of the proposed sustainability assessment and forecasting model framework is also presented in this paper. Discussion on relevant implementation issues including a simulation system and key limitations of the framework are also presented. This framework can be adopted for development and implementation of a simulation system for sustainability assessment and forecasting studies.

Potential driving forces and environmental impacts of urban and suburban development of rural lands were investigated in a 44-county study region located in the central portion of the state of Indiana. Land-cover dynamics were quantified through classification and change detection analysis of Landsat satellite imagery acquired in the early 1990s and in 1999–2000. Satellite-based measurements of land-cover change were found to be significantly related to socioeconomic processes, including population change, financial investment in the built environment, and the extent of preexisting developed land cover. The results indicate that efficiency in per capita use of developed land decreased over the temporal scope of the study. Changes in per capita developed land cover were found to be significantly related to the total amount of growth that occurred, suggesting that areas that experienced more growth were less efficient consumers of rural land. The results also show that changing spatial structures of land-cover configuration resulted in varying degrees of loss of different rural land-cover types, increased fragmentation of agricultural lands, and increased sensible heat exchange between surface and atmosphere.

An important indicator of sustainable land use, the ecological footprint measure has proved unsuitable for many planning applications because of the limited availability of impact data at the local level of cities and counties and because of an inability to estimate the ecological footprint of future development scenarios. In light of these limitations, this paper presents a methodology for measuring the ecological footprint of a county-level transportation network in current and future time periods. With the aid of vehicle travel behavior and fleet characteristics obtained from a number of state and federal agencies, we estimate the quantity of land required for constructing county highways and remediating annual greenhouse gas emissions through forest carbon sequestration in the years 2001, 2011, and 2021. The results of our study, which focuses on Houghton County, Michigan, indicate that, despite a projected increase in average vehicle fuel efficiency, the ecological footprint of transportation will increase in future years because of projected increases in total annual vehicle kilometers of travel along the network. On the basis of these results, we argue that the ecological footprint is a viable technique for transportation and land-use planning applications.

In this paper, a spatial diffusion model that can be applied to village development projects was developed with the expansion of a rural village taken into consideration, from the viewpoint of practical application with cellular automata techniques. The model determines and allocates a new built-up area required for the expansion of existing villages. Cellular automata and land suitability analysis methods were combined in the model, which uses grid data from geographic information systems. Probability of land use change for optimizing the development area was determined using a land suitability analysis method based on six criteria, which include the slope, drainage characteristic, and aspect of land and the distances from a road, stream, and village center. Weighting values of these criteria were quantified by an analytic hierarchy process method. Model tests for the simulation of three types of village expansion—an isolation village, a village with a horizontal road, and a village with a nodal point of cross road—showed results that reasonably agreed with the general location theory of urban land. Model applicability to a test village was also evaluated. The six parameters of criteria were calibrated based on the changes in land use data of the test village between 1973 and 1980, through sensitivity analysis for all parameters by a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test method. Simulated and observed results of village shape in a land use map from 1992 showed good similarities with each other through a morphology verification method. The model was also applied to the simulation of spatial changes according to three scenario plans, which enabled us not only to evaluate the spatial expansion of the village according to boundary conditions of the model, but also to simulate the village’s land use planning.

There are as many distinct shopping itineraries in a shopping center as there are shoppers, at some level of discrimination; yet clear patterns of flow and volume can be observed in aggregate movement over the network of pathways. This paper tests the hypothesis that the aggregate pattern is a result of visitors operating according to simple movement heuristics. Itineraries are generated at seven entrances to a shopping mall according to four programmed heuristics. The results are aggregated by network segments and compared with observed itineraries. Generating movement toward stores according to their attraction, where attraction is defined by the size of the store, produces the best fit with actual behavior. Movement toward pathways with high connectivity also describes a significant proportion of the observed spatial behavior. Highly significant preferences are observed at the first and second choice points after the entrance. In general, microscale pedestrian choice in a shopping mall is systematic behavior and is visible in the aggregate itinerary data.