Journal of Urban Planning and Development

The relationship between housing characteristics and residential property price is complex to illustrate. To have a better understanding of the housing-price structure, structural or spatial submarkets have been introduced in previous studies. However, there is no consensus on the importance of neighborhood effect among them. With regard to this issue, this study specifically focuses on the differences in structural, geographical, and demographical effects between housing submarkets (as categorized by dwelling space). Market subdivisions are relative to consumer behaviors. The heterogeneity of spatial effects in different submarkets gives an explanation as to why the impact of nonneighborhood housing factors in those submarket models is similar, regardless of whether the neighborhood effect is included or not. It also indicates that only some, but not all, of the potential purchasers would make decisions with reference to transaction records of flats in the surrounding areas, only when the flat they want to buy is within a specific range in size. Other critical characteristics such as building age, dwelling space, location choice, and commuting time (to central business district) show remarkably different effects on housing price in those submarkets. Segmentation of housing market by dwelling space (and the average price per square feet is higher when the flats are larger) helps to obtain a better understanding of the importance of dwelling space in housing valuations and in urban housing planning.

The purpose of this research is to identify correlates of bike station activity for Nice Ride Minnesota, a bike share system in the Minneapolis–St. Paul Metropolitan Area in Minnesota. The number of trips to and from each of the 116 bike share stations operating in 2011 was obtained from Nice Ride Minnesota. Data for independent variables included in the proposed models come from a variety of sources, including the 2010 U.S. Census; the Metropolitan Council, a regional planning agency; and the Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Log-linear and negative binomial regression models are used to evaluate the marginal effects of these factors on average daily station trips. The models have high goodness of fit, and each of 13 independent variables is significant at the 10% level or higher. The number of trips at Nice Ride stations is associated with neighborhood sociodemographics (i.e., age and race), proximity to the central business district, proximity to water, accessibility to trails, distance to other bike share stations, and measures of economic activity. Analysts can use these results to optimize bike share operations, locate new stations, and evaluate the potential of new bike share programs.

Participatory landscape approaches are currently being positioned as the essential basis for sustainable landscape development. However, with the current democratic transform and the consequent decentralization of the spatial planning policy in Egypt, no practices have been conducted in this field. Accordingly, there is a vital need for coherent and integrated approaches for the practical application of participatory landscape. This paper represents one of a series of research papers targeting this aim. It focuses on poor urban settings in existing informal areas and in new cities’ districts, represented by the case studies of Monashaet Nasser and the sixth district in the 6th of October city, respectively, which are used to carry out the questionnaires, followed by a statistical analysis and illustrative causal loop diagrams. The questionnaire integrates measuring local residents’ willingness and participation methods together with the practitioners’ recommendations for their degree of involvement as compared with the other stakeholders, with the functional, environmental, aesthetical, economic, maintainability, and sociability quality aspects of the landscape that would be achieved. The tests undertaken in this research were carried out through a statistical analysis using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) program, followed by an illustrative analysis for the results represented by the causal loop diagrams, which show a clear representation for the roles of each of the residents and stakeholders in the process. The results illustrate the fact that although the two case studies were from the same economic level, there were variations among most of the findings concerning the local residents’ participation method. They indicated that the local residents in existing poor urban settings prefer to participate with their effort only, whereas those living in the poor new cities’ districts are willing to participate with their money, time, and effort. Moreover, it was found that the landscape aspects that would be positively affected are the maintainability aspects for the existing area and the sociability aspects for the relatively new district, with traces of negative effects on the functional and aesthetical landscape qualities. This highlights the challenges for the decision makers when constructing their implementation plans, to achieve the balance among all roles of stakeholders to avoid any negative effects and overcome the distrust landscape problems that have been compositely formed upon past participatory experiences, especially in existing poor settings.

This paper discusses an observational study that explored the impact of land use/land cover, and population density on the formation of canopy UHI in Nagpur. The study aims to compare the canopy UHI hotspots and heat sinks with respect to urban land use/land cover, and population density as the prominent determinants in urban areas. Traverse surveys were carried during the summer and winter seasons, 2012–2014, to measure nocturnal mean canopy UHI intensity. The nocturnal mean canopy UHI intensity was observed as 2.14°C during summer and 2.36°C during winter traverse surveys within Nagpur. Canopy UHI effects were found to be most prevailing in high building density and high population density areas. Densely populated areas with less vegetation exhibited the highest canopy UHI hotspots and areas with the least canopy UHI are the heat sink spots. The impact of vegetation is negative because it weakens the canopy UHI effect. On the contrary, population density could strengthen the canopy UHI effect in this case study. The study concludes that changes in land use/land cover of any specific land parcel and their respective vegetation cover and population density distribution lead to canopy UHI formation in Nagpur, India, urban areas. There is a need to frame a strategic mitigation plan with respect to land use/land cover classes and population density distribution within Nagpur urban areas to avoid further formation of canopy UHI and achieve urban sustenance.

Central Place Theory has been proposed for a long time, but it is rarely applied in empirical research or planning practices on retail center systems in the real world primarily attributable to the complexities that are too difficult for the theory to capture and replicate in efficient ways. This paper proposes an agent-based simulation system which can derive spatial distributions of multilevel retail centers by simulating the interactions between retail centers and consumers. In the simulation, the retail centers can grow, recess, and adjust locations according to the revenues; the consumers generate different levels of shopping demands and choose retail centers according to spatial distance. By recursively simulating the interactions, equilibrium is reached with the distribution of emerging retail centers. The system is validated by examining the simulated retail center systems under five hypothetical but typical scenarios of consumer spatial distribution. It is also applied in modeling the retail center system of Shanghai in the 2000s. The results show a face validity of the simulation system as a potential tool for real-world planning practices.

The smart city concept is often simply considered equivalent only to technology. This paper starts by introducing the necessity of a holistic, integrated, and multidisciplinary approach to the concept of smart cities. Smart cities are evolving by the creation of tools that are application specific; therefore, European classification of smart city applications will be reviewed (as authors have used these criteria to classify the analyzed applications) and the relationship between the different European smart classification standards are analyzed. Moreover, in order to see how reality aligns with the theoretical concept of smart cities, the authors analyzed 61 applications from 33 smart cities distributed in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. From these, 16 specific applications from eight cities have been selected and described in detail so they provide an overview of existing tools in different application areas, as defined by European standards. After showing actual smart cities, the concepts and steps for building future smart cities are suggested in a conclusion.

This paper analyzes the passenger-carpooling potential among undergraduate students using a model for estimating choice based on combined revealed and stated preference data. The data are obtained from a survey performed at four campuses of Istanbul Technical University. The case in focus is carpooling as a passenger; carpooling as a driver is deliberately left out because of students’ lack of familiarity with it. The hypothetical passenger-carpooling scenarios lead to enquiries about the fee students are willing to pay and the distance they are willing to walk to a designated pick-up location. The estimation results show that females and frequent campus travelers are more likely to prefer passenger carpooling. The scenario analysis included in the paper reveals the prioritization of carpool fee over walking distance to pick-up locations among undergraduate students.

Britain is one of the few European Union member states that does not produce and maintain a strategic spatial plan at the national tier. This study concentrates on the concepts of national spatial strategic plan in England and discusses its the contents and frameworks. To make it more rational, this study also uses European comparators (the Netherlands and France) and English historical precedents to make initial suggestions for the design of a national spatial strategic plan for England. From the experience of the Netherlands and France, the paper discussed which model would be more suitable for England and each key character of these two countries’ national development planning. This study then gives some discussions on the current regional development plan and local development plan system of England and the future of the national spatial strategic plan.

This study develops a green index to evaluate the sustainability of different paths in urban transportation networks of origin-destination (OD) pairs. Urban transportation networks usually involve various transport modes and trips can be accomplished with more than one pattern. The basic functions of transportation, mobility and accessibility, are also explored based on travel time. This study provides strategies for Taipei City to shift smoothly to green transportation while preserving mobility and accessibility from both transport network and mode perspectives. A proposal is presented to connect activity and transportation networks by densely distributed convenience stores in Taipei. A Monte Carlo simulation of thousands of OD pairs in Taipei City is conducted to examine proposed strategies. The results indicate that for short trips, commuters can directly use motorcycles by renting and returning those at convenience stores of origins and destinations. For medium and long trips, electric motorcycles are promoted as green feeder modes to mass rapid transit stations.

Recent sustainability initiatives have shown that targeting pedestrian infrastructure improvement programs can enhance walkability and reduce traffic volume. Smart growth planning supports the need not only to build additional nonmotorized facilities, but also to improve the planning, prioritization, and funding process. Identifying pedestrian infrastructure needs through the development of an index can resolve inconsistencies and inequities regarding funding sustainable transportation infrastructure. This research investigates how transportation planning agencies can improve the process of prioritizing pedestrian improvement projects through two objectives: (1) the development of the pedestrian corridor improvement index (PCII); and (2) the application of PCII to pathways in Union County, Pennsylvania, as a case study. The PCII integrates pedestrian performance metrics with the analytic hierarchy process to assist in the prioritization of pedestrian pathway improvements. In order to test the applicability and relevance of the index to a real world network, four pathways in Union County, Pennsylvania, are evaluated and recommendations on the implementation process are provided. The PCII serves as a tool for agencies to enhance the decision-making process for planning pedestrian improvement projects.

Walking facilities are important infrastructures in communities. These facilities should be designed to accommodate the needs of all types of pedestrians. Unfortunately, existing design guidelines fail to offer adequate consideration for individuals with disabilities owing to a lack of empirical data. To address this knowledge gap, a controlled large-scale research project was conducted at Utah State University (USU) to study the walking behavior of people with various types of disabilities in various indoor walking facilities. These facilities included a passageway, different types of angles (right and oblique), bottleneck, and stairwells. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to examine the impacts of individuals with disabilities on crowd walking speed, and to study the impacts of different indoor walking facilities on the movements of various pedestrian groups. Results show that the presence of individuals with disabilities in a crowd significantly reduces the overall crowd speed. Statistical analysis also reveals similarities and differences between the walking speeds of various pedestrian groups. A regression model is calibrated to predict the speed of various types of individuals with disabilities in different indoor walking facilities. The findings of this paper may help urban planners and walking facility designers consider the needs of people with disabilities.

Usually, people pursue settlements that fulfill their needs and realize their aspirations. Since the 1970s, the Egyptian government has established new urban communities to fulfill the increasing demand for housing. At the national level, the population of Egypt’s 20 new cities did not exceed 766,000 persons in 2006, or only 1.06% of Egypt’s total population. The population of these new cities reached only approximately 30% of the targeted population of 2006. On the other hand, the environmental and urban conditions in existing urban areas are deteriorating, which caused them to become expellant areas. This indicates a gap between housing supply and demand, or in other words, between what government provides and people need; in addition, there is a misallocation of resources. The present study suggests a participatory planning tool where residents elaborate on the planning/replanning process by defining their priorities. The tool, based on the analytical hierarchy process, helps professionals and decision makers to recognize the relationship between residents’ priorities and their built environment, understand residents’ mobility, evaluate existing urban settlements, and design new ones according to residents’ preferences. The paper furthermore tests the applicability of the suggested tool by selecting a middle class income sample, then defining their preferences toward their built environment to evaluate different urban areas, usually inhabited by the same socioeconomic level, using the acquired data. After testing the suggested tool and discussing its advantages and problems faced, it can be deduced that this tool not only provides an appropriate bed for evaluating the built environment based on residents’ preferences, but also facilitates the participation of residents in the urban planning process. The suggested tool could be useful for developers and decision makers while developing a new urban area or regenerating an existing one.

Housing price becomes a popular topic among nearly most of the investors in major Chinese cities. Recently, the housing markets appears to have shown signs of overheating and nonstationary trends, attributable to the collapse of the global economic environment and the introduction of local policies. The purpose of this study is to investigate if abrupt structural changes, which can be viewed as the effectiveness of government regulations and economic events but hidden in the housing price index, exist. An improved nonparametric statistical model, namely the wavelet detection technique, is introduced in this paper, based on which jump point(s) can be identified. Our empirical study illustrates that the domino effect as suggested by the detected change points are, geographically, from south to north, and from east to west, in contrast with general understanding. This may be a result of the owner-occupier demand in China’s housing markets.

Although infrastructure is the backbone of every human settlement, development and accessibility of infrastructure in most developing countries are very low and poor as a result of fiscal challenges. This calls for rethinking infrastructure provision approaches to assuage the costs, particularly linear infrastructure, so as to ensure some match between infrastructure demand and supply in developing countries, given the fiscal challenges. This study seeks to relate one urban feature—street pattern—to linear infrastructure cost by modeling the capital costs of a water distribution system, electricity distribution system, and road network to four different residential neighborhood patterns with the same tract area of $1.1{\mathrm{km}}^2$ each. The study identifies the tributary pattern as being the most economical pattern in terms of linear infrastructure costs in comparison with the radial, grid, and hybrid patterns. Although the tributary pattern has the disadvantage of inaccessibility, it could be alleviated by fitting it with a carefully designed network of footpaths, which fits into most developing countries’ means of transportation in residential areas (i.e., walking).

Prioritization of urban redevelopment to achieve sustainable neighborhood revitalization has received considerable attention. This study investigates whether a prescriptive approach to urban development, the third-party rating system, coupled with a business intelligence dashboard, as a data visualization tool to display the status of redevelopment can provide feasible and intuitive integration of data in which to prioritize redevelopment. This study presents a new framework and key sustainability indicators based on existing third-party rating systems to prioritize redevelopment. These assessments are introduced into a spatial decision support system using a dashboard as an interactive tool to gather and consolidate data and to present an evaluative means for decision makers. The tool allows identification of the highest-priority sites for long-term and short-term redevelopment of properties in Paterson, New Jersey. The study attempts to advance knowledge in sustainable urban redevelopment through developing a dashboard visualization tool coupled with a third-party rating system. Results indicate the proposed approach enables decision makers to explore relationships among social, environmental, and economic variables more efficiently. Depending on local development priorities, the proposed approach is also able to reveal brownfield locations that have the highest potential for successful redevelopment, recovery of lost revenue, and return to beneficial use.

Although the relationships between street centrality and land-use intensity have been documented, only a few studies have explained the disparities in the global relationships among different land-use types or explored the local spatial relationships among such types. In this paper, the previously mentioned problem is addressed by investigating the main urban area of Wuhan, China. The street centrality indicators of closeness, betweenness, and straightness are expanded by considering the node-based weight of the road grade and road width. Land-use intensity is measured based on the building and economic activity density in the different land-use types. Kernel density estimation is used to convert the measures to a basic raster unit, whereas the geographically weighted regression (GWR) method is used to explore the spatial heterogeneity in the relationships. The results indicate strong relationships between street centrality and land-use intensity. Furthermore, the relationships vary not only among the different land-use types but also in the different categories of a single land-use type. Spatial heterogeneity also exists in these relationships. This finding confirms that street centrality plays a crucial role in shaping urban structure and land-use intensity, and understanding the formation of urban fabrics and the advancement of human civilization.

Site selection is a fundamental part of the decision-making process when attempting to reclaim derelict land and brownfield sites in any specific area. A geographic information system (GIS)-based multicriteria decision analysis was conducted to prioritize brownfield redevelopment in a depressed post-industrial district in northern Spain, following site redevelopment criteria of adequacy of the various sites to putative urban reuses, attending to physical, environmental, urban, and legal factors. Four main possible uses were defined, i.e., residential, industrial, recreational, and infrastructural, and the various factors were weighed according to their relative importance for each of these types of development. The results show that the primary factor conditioning brownfield redevelopment in the study area is the availability of urban facilities and proximity of the derelict patches to urbanized areas where the main infrastructures and services are guaranteed. They also highlight the deep impact that certain activities such as mining and uncontrolled chemical waste discharges may cause on the areas affected by them, which might be irreversibly condemned to abandonment due to the high costs and technical difficulties involved in restoring them. Thus, site location with respect to urban facilities and previous activities seem to be the two main factors conditioning the suitability of brownfields for redevelopment in the study area.

Outdoor thermal comfort in urban spaces is an important indicator of the quality of life in an urban environment. This paper attempts to investigate the effect of street design on outdoor thermal comfort in an urban street in the central business district in Singapore, focusing on the design variables of street orientation, height-to-width ratio (H/W), and vegetation. A comprehensive field measurement with multiple points is presented and used to validate a widely used computer software holistic microclimate modeling system. The significance of the research is that real field data from multiple measurement points on microclimate parameters are produced and the effect of street design parameters on outdoor thermal comfort is quantified. It is found in the paper that the NW-SE oriented street is more stressful than the NE-SW street in the afternoon in terms of thermal comfort in Singapore, and that a H/W of 3 can be considered a threshold with respect to outdoor thermal comfort. The paper concludes that the results presented can provide guidance for urban planners and designers to achieve optimized outdoor human thermal comfort.