Journal of Urban Planning and Development

Intersections of major six-lane arterial roadways and minor four-lane arterial roadways are becoming increasingly common across the United States, in part due to the proliferation of hierarchical street design. Such intersections typically have dedicated turn lanes, resulting in large expanses of pavement that make accommodating pedestrians a difficult proposition. Using microsimulation to create over 1,200 scenarios, this research presents the level of service impact of trying to accommodate pedestrian crossings for 117 combinations of vehicle volumes, with the results suggesting that accommodating even modest levels of pedestrian activity will drastically reduce vehicular capacity. The same procedure was repeated for typical mitigation strategies such as slip lanes/pork-chop islands and two-stage pedestrian crossings with minimal improvement. Intersection performance is then compared to a lane-equivalent gridded street network of smaller intersections with the results suggesting that a finer-grained street network is far superior both in terms of accommodating pedestrians as well as overall vehicular capacity.

This paper introduces new tools and strategies to assess the perceived comfort and safety of bicycle travel across a large geographic area. The tools are based on the equation for bicycle level-of-service in a U.S. government manual. The equation requires substantial data that can be time-intensive and expensive to collect for a wide-scale area. For this reason, the paper begins by discussing data-availability issues with a survey that was sent to every city and county in Idaho. Of the 115 responses, no community had all the necessary data and many had very little data. Next, the paper describes a sensitivity analysis that engineers and planners can follow to identify the critical data that should be collected for their community. The sensitivity analysis is described using two case study communities and reveals, among other things, that input-output sensitivity for bicycle level-of-service depends on roadway functional class. The tools and strategies in this paper will save communities time and money when developing plans or prioritizing projects.

In China and a number of other countries, recent years have seen a prevailing trend in collective and cooperative urban development, transforming individual cities to polycentric metropolis. Such a phenomenon, also termed urban agglomeration by some researchers in China, has gradually become the main body of urbanization and the basic terrain unit in participating international competition and international division of labor. However, the spatial delimitation of urban agglomeration has been historically heavily influenced by subjective administrative instruction, as opposed to being primarily driven by radiation effects by regional central cities. To better delimitate the urban agglomeration sphere in China and other fast-developing areas, this work seeks to scientifically assess and comprehensively delimitate the spatial patterns of regional central cities’ radiation through quantitative analysis and modeling. Zhengzhou, a typical regional central city in central China is chosen as the study case. First, it makes a modification to the traditional gravity model by constructing a radiation quality index (RQI) and integrating distances representing commuter traffic, economic development gap, and cultural psychological factors. Subsequently, a comprehensive delimitation is derived that demarcates and describes Zhengzhou’s urban radiation toward 42 neighboring cities by applying the radiation field intensity model, radiation effect function, and judgment vectors of the urban radiation ring-layer model. The chief findings are that Zhengzhou’s radiation effect is not prominent compared to other similar provincial capital-level cities. There is no distinct psychological or spatial differentiation between Zhengzhou and its 42 neighboring cities. The economic distance between Zhengzhou and other cities has been stable, and has even shrunk, whereas there are notable differences among fixed range ring patterns. The interaction forces between Zhengzhou and neighboring cities have increased, and radiation field intensity of Zhengzhou has been expanded to outer rings. However, some cities along the provincial boundary received very limited influence from Zhengzhou, and are significantly more influenced by other radiation sources. In 2001 and 2009, there were 26 and 24 cities that fell in Zhengzhou’s urban radiation rings, respectively, whereas only seven cities were included in the core and primary radiation ring. This list of seven cities excluded Luohe City, in spite of its administrative inclusion within Zhengzhou. Zhengzhou’s urban radiation ring contracts in its southern and western quadrants, whereas it expands in the eastern and northern quadrants. This finding prompts the authors to advocate the city of Zhengzhou to prioritize on expanding its radiation to the southeastern area around the Zhongyuan Urban Agglomeration. Such balanced development could prove beneficial to not only Zhengzhou City, but also the entire Henan Province.

Since the 1950s, Brazilian cities have experienced intense growth because of the country’s industrialization, and from 2001 policies aimed at the prevention of disordered urban development have been implemented. The lack of green spaces and excess of vacant land are difficulties faced by most Brazilian cities; therefore, understanding the development of these factors in the urban area is essential. This case study was conducted in Atibaia (a city located in the metropolitan fringe of São Paulo) with the following goals: (1) understand urban sprawl and the spatial development of green spaces and vacant land in five different time periods (1962, 1972, 1978, 1995, and 2009), (2) analyze policies that would contribute to an ordered urban development, and (3) serve as guidelines for urban-planning studies, local authorities, and researchers. The results of this study show the following: (1) urban sprawl is a continuous process (even in 2009, when 21% of the land was vacant) and is encouraged by a permissible master plan, and (2) the increase of green spaces is the result of growth upon the remaining forests in periurban regions.

This paper aims to demonstrate and assess the potential for integrated planning involving urban morphology, urban mobility, buildings, and energy efficiency. The approach is based on the development and application of a method for energy modeling on the scale of urban districts and neighborhoods, envisioning the physical structure, functional characteristics, such as land use and urban circulation, and energy efficiency of urban areas. The results of methodology application in the Agua Branca case study, an urban development area located in Sao Paulo, Brazil, indicate that the planning, in the master planning stage, of a basic volume of buildings associated with their geographical orientation and the design of urban canyons represents the main urban strategy to reduce energy consumption in buildings. The energy efficiency potential in urban transport is much higher than in buildings, indicating that the main energy efficiency action in the Agua Branca urban area as a whole would be the prioritization of public transport in relation to individual transport.

Mega-region development has been identified as one of the top national agenda items in China. Aggressive institutional policies have been put in place to guide and encourage the formation and development of mega-regions. This article analyzes how this development model is being adopted in China and identifies the factors that contribute to such institutional arrangements, using the transformation in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) mega-region as an example. This article argues that mega-region development in China is an institutional response to global and regional economic transformation and significantly affects the regional development outlook. It uses a strong top-down characteristic to enforce the senior government’s political and economic objectives. Findings are drawn from reviewing government policies, analyzing socioeconomic data, and discussing intrinsic issues before recommendations are proposed.

This manuscript analyzes personal and carsharing consumption characteristics of alternative commuters of the same university in Los Angeles, California. The paper finds that: (1) one can achieve a reasonably high carsharing rate among university employees, particularly employees commuting by alternative modes other than driving alone, female employees, and employees whose income is lower than the median income of all the employees; (2) university employees’ participation rate in the carsharing program is lower than the students’ and thus, the latter contributes more to the existing argument that a university campus is a niche market for carsharing; (3) commuter benefits are not only correlated to the employee participation rate of a carsharing program, but also to the behavior of the participants: their frequency and quantity of carsharing consumption and when to carshare; (4) free hours do not necessarily increase the carsharing consumption of employee carsharers who are eligible for these hours; (5) one does not need a large number of shared vehicles to satisfy the needs of employee carsharers at the place of work.

This paper explores the relationship of walk access distance to rapid rail transit (RRT) stations with personal characteristics and station context, specifically in regard to an operated RRT system in the city of Nanjing, China. Both descriptive analysis and regression analysis on the commuter survey are conducted to reveal the association. Descriptive analysis indicates that the walk access distance in the morning peak is longer than that in the afternoon peak. Young commuters walk farther to access to RRT stations than children and older people. The walk access distance decreases with increasing household income. Regression analysis, in particular, on the association between walk access distance and station context suggests that commuters walk farther to reach a terminal station but walk a shorter distance to arrive at a transfer station than to a typical station. The walk access distance to an elevated station is longer than that to an underground station, and an approximately 100-m distance premium does seem to exist. In addition, the radius of the pedestrian catchment area (PCA) of an underground RRT station is about 200–300 m longer than the PCA of bus rapid transit station. Implications of the present study include defining flexible rail transit station’s PCAs in estimating urban rail transit (URT) ridership at the station level, optimizing the house location and price premium analysis around URT stations, and identifying the opportunities for transit-oriented development in the PCA of rail stations.

The protection of human health is among the original justifications for urban planning, but it is underexamined as one of the myriad benefits of planning for climate change. A conceptual content analysis of the spatial development strategy and climate action plans of London, United Kingdom, was performed to reveal how health was portrayed in climate change adaptation goals and actions. In London’s spatial development and climate action plans, there was a total of 300 instances of the keyword ‘health’ with weighted percentages of coverage in the documents ranging from 0.19% to 0.45%. The conclusions from this analysis are that stated threats to health are truly localized, policies that address health acknowledge both adaptation and mitigation, and health inequalities and creating an environment supportive of health are the most salient cross-cutting issues.