Journal of Urban Planning and Development

In today’s competitive environment, managing the entire supply chain becomes a key factor for the successful business. However, the manufactured housing (MH) industry has mainly focused on manufacturing and quality improvements in the past years. It is important for the MH industry to extend its focus to the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire supply chain. In this paper, as a first step, current supply chain practices in the manufactured housing industry have been identified and analyzed along with the characteristics of customer, retailer, and manufacturer. This analysis assists the supply chain participants in planning new products and preparing for new consumer needs. As a result, the entire supply chain process was modeled and a conceptual supply chain model was developed. This conceptual supply chain model can be used for understanding the current supply chain relationship at the macro level as well as a framework for developing a supply chain management system for the manufactured housing industry.

This study provides an empirical assessment of energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with high and low residential development. Three major elements of urban development are considered: construction materials for infrastructure (including residential dwellings, utilities, and roads), building operations, and transportation (private automobiles and public transit). Two case studies from the City of Toronto are analyzed. An economic input–output life-cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) model is applied to estimate the energy use and GHG emissions associated with the manufacture of construction materials for infrastructure. Operational requirements for dwellings and transportation are estimated using nationally and/or regionally averaged data. The results indicate that the most targeted measures to reduce GHG emissions in an urban development context should be aimed at transportation emissions, while the most targeted measures to reduce energy usage should focus on building operations. The results also show that low-density suburban development is more energy and GHG intensive (by a factor of 2.0–2.5) than high-density urban core development on a per capita basis. When the functional unit is changed to a per unit of living space basis the factor decreases to 1.0–1.5, illustrating that the choice of functional unit is highly relevant to a full understanding of urban density effects.

Activity centers are areas of strong development of a particular activity, such as residence, employment, or recreation. Understanding shifts in activity centers can help in creating development strategies for subway corridors. This study applied the fuzzy inference system to analyze shifts in activity centers along the blue line of the Taipei subway system (hereafter called the Blue Corridor). Empirical findings indicate that the subway line might weaken residential activities while attracting employment and recreation activities to the newly developed city center. Specifically, residential activities moved away from the city center whereas employment and recreation activities expanded from the existed central business district (CBD) to the eastern suburbs of Taipei. Strategic analysis of the Panchiao station area found that if the commercial and industrial floor space increase by over 350 or 500%, Panchiao station area will be identified as “possibly is an employment center,” or “definitely is an employment center,” respectively.

Entropy maximization approach has been widely used in transportation planning. It provides theoretical basis for a class of forecast models on traffic demand. In this paper, the concept of entropy from information theory is borrowed to describe inhabitant trip distribution and then a trip distribution model is presented under constraints of typical characteristics based on origin moments. The model is characteristic of generality. The concrete form of the model depends on the order of the highest origin moment which has a great impact on the precision of the model and the labor of parameters calibration. The paper expatiates on this situation and puts forward an iteration method to ascertain the parameters in the model. And then, an entropy method is given to compare the difference of the models for selection. The application of the models and the methods is illustrated via 2001 trip data from the city of Changchun, China.

Combined wetlands and infiltration ponds are cost-effective ‘end of pipe’ drainage solutions that can be applied for local source control as part of urban development and regeneration. The aims of this case study were to assess constraints associated with the planning, design, and operation of these ponds, the influence of aquatic plants on infiltration rates, and the water treatment potential. Storm runoff was first stored and treated in a constructed wetland before it overflowed into parallel infiltration ponds of which one was planted and the other one was unplanted. Three international best management practice design guidelines failed in practice. The presence of macrophytes in one infiltration pond had no significant influence on the drainage properties. The water quality of both ponds was not acceptable for water reuse directly after the system setup. Filamentous green algae within the unplanted pond were blooming in spring and summer creating an aesthetically unpleasing pond surface area. After $1\text{year}$ of operation, barley straw and Carassius auratus (common goldfish) were introduced successfully to control the growth of algae.

Several state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in the United States are considering environmental issues in the early stages of the transportation planning process, recognizing that there are benefits to be gained from better decisions, reduced public controversy, and shortened times to project implementation. This paper examines the current practice of such consideration, with special emphasis on best case examples. The study was conducted through a literature review, a survey of state DOTs and MPOs, and the identification of best case examples. The findings indicate the emergence, both in the literature and in practice, of more formal recognition of the need to consider environmental factors earlier in the planning process. State DOTs and MPOs agree that air quality, land use, socio-economic, environmental justice, and community cohesion impacts are of greatest concern today, and will be so in $10\text{years}$ . Different approaches for considering environmental factors in planning include scenario analysis, environmental analysis of plans, environmental performance measures, consideration of equity issues, new data and analysis tools, and innovative institutional partnerships.

The problem of seeking an optimal parking policy is formulated here as a Stackelberg game between the government and the travelers. The government wishes to encourage transit ridership while keeping a strong urban center; unlike most existing tools that assist in determining parking policies, the proposed game includes an explicit quantitative formulation of the governmental objective. Each traveler wishes to gain a maximum utility from his choice of destination and transportation mode, and the choice distribution of all travelers is obtained by Logit model. A fundamental difference exists between Game Theory practice and common assumptions used in transportation modeling regarding the relationship between a single traveler’s utility and the choice distribution of all travelers. This difference is tackled here through the definition of the player that represents the travelers and its objective function. A simple version of the game is tested in 24 imaginary scenarios of transportation and urban conditions.

The transformation of the planned housing provision as an in-kind welfare benefit to a market-oriented housing allocation system is the ultimate goal of the urban housing reform in China. The main concern of the housing reform is to regulate the relationship between the state, market, work units, and individuals. Housing has always been a major problem in Shanghai. The rate of new housing construction has lagged far behind the rate of population growth. In the market reform process, the state has been reducing its role in housing provision which has resulted in significant increases in house prices as well as demand for housing at an affordable level. There is a gap between housing price and affordability. This paper examines the different measures of urban housing reform toward housing affordability in relation to the different stages of economic development in Shanghai during the periods from the 1980s to now. It emphasizes the rent policy and the “provident fund for housing”—A housing saving scheme. The prime intent of this paper is to investigate Shanghai’s housing policy under the urban housing reform toward affordability, at various stages of economic development. The paper attempts to ascertain what lessons can be learned to assist the provision of affordable housing in major cities in Mainland China.