Journal of Urban Planning and Development

The study of landscape fragmentation offers promising approaches for better understanding how the interaction between natural conditions and socioeconomic factors generates environmental changes. In this paper, the state of landscape fragmentation due to urban-transportation networks in Fujian Province, China, was calculated on different spatial scales, using effective mesh size as an index for fragmentation degree. The relationship between fragmentation degree and regional socioeconomic development was explored to detect how socioeconomic processes, such as urbanization or industrialization, affect landscape change. The results demonstrated that even more than population increase, economic growth has a more significant impact on landscape. Growth from all three sectors (agriculture, industry, and service) can significantly accelerate the process of landscape fragmentation, and those from industry and service are the recent actual drivers leading to a fragmented landscape in China. The results also suggest that the widespread influences of urbanization on landscape do not always need to be negative, as is the widely accepted notion, and this realization might be helpful in slowing down the speed of landscape fragmentation on a regional scale. Based on this knowledge, the significances of this work for urban planners and policymakers are discussed.

Link level annual average daily traffic (AADT) or travel demand is used in several urban planning, roadway design, operational, and safety analyses by transportation planners and engineers. Existing AADT estimation methods do not adequately account for spatial proximity, variations, and dependency to address modeling needs. The primary focus of this paper, therefore, is to incorporate these aspects and develop a method to estimate link level AADT by the urban road functional class. Geospatial analytical techniques were explored to capture spatial data within proximal areas of selected roadway links and develop statistical models to estimate link level AADT. Polygon-based network buffers were generated within the proximal roadway distance of each study link to account for actual connectivity and capture off-network data instead of Euclidean distance-based buffers. On-network characteristics of the study links and upstream, downstream, and cross-street network links were considered to account for the spatial dependency of on-network characteristics. The applicability of the method and predictive capability of the models to estimate link level AADT, considering all of the selected study links and by each road functional class, was researched. The working of the method and development of the models is illustrated using data for the city of Charlotte in the state of North Carolina. The generalized estimating equation (GEE) models developed indicate that a negative binomial distribution fits better than a Poisson distribution for the data considered in this research. The ideal proximal distance to capture spatial data and accurately estimate AADT was observed to vary when all study links and different road functional classes were modeled separately. Overall, the results obtained indicate that spatial proximity and dependency play a vital role in accurately estimating travel demand on various urban road functional classes.

Urbanization is an important engine in regional economic development and transformation. In this paper, panel-vector autoregressive (P-VAR) models are constructed based on panel data of the Three Gorges reservoir in China during the period 2007–2011. Using the impulse-response function and variance decomposition, this paper empirically analyzes the relevance between urbanization and industry development. The authors find that (1) agriculture development has a short and weak effect on urbanization, but the latter has no such effect on the former; (2) there is no significant integration between urbanization and manufacturing industry development; and (3) service development has a long, persistent, and gradually strengthening effect on urbanization and vice versa. This indicates a prominent integration between urbanization and service development. The findings suggest that policies that promote and support service and modern agriculture development will promote the New Urbanization development of the Three Gorges Reservoir area.

This paper develops a model for evaluating optimal coordination of a multimodal and multioperator transit system. The core logic of the modeling is to minimize the total cost for both transit operators and users. Hence, the objective function is the total cost which consists of operator cost and user cost. The models, which take the form of feedback equilibrium, were solved using the outer approximate algorithm provided in computer software. Sensitivity analysis and statistical analysis were carried out to make comparisons of optimal cost components under different operator policies. The results indicated that optimal coordination strategies would be a cooperation policy between operators in an integer-coordination approach in the special situation similar to Singapore transit system.

Parking in big cities is never easy. Policy-makers and transportation planners have developed many strategies to accommodate increasing parking demand. However, most of them focus on passenger vehicles, and analysis of delivery vehicle parking is still limited. This study uses recent disaggregate data of freight delivery patterns collected in the Manhattan area, which is rarely available in freight studies, to explore the factors influencing delivery vehicle on-street parking characteristics and drivers’ behavior. A duration model is used to analyze delivery vehicle on-street parking duration, and a count data model is used to analyze the parking frequency of delivery tours. With the outputs of these models, the effectiveness of different traffic-management and parking-management strategies are assessed. The results show that policies encouraging smaller delivery vehicle, higher loading efficiency, and shorter parking duration will reduce congestion and economic losses. The results also demonstrate the value of disaggregate data in freight studies, implying the need for larger-scale and more-detailed data collection for future studies.

Urban systems are complicated systems where land-use changes may significantly affect the environment and the ecosystem. Therefore, modeling urban growth is crucial for urban planners and administrators to support sustainable development. This paper provides a spatially disaggregated model for urban growth simulation that is characterized by the innovative idea that considers the behavior of residents and couples the explorations of the game between farmers and governments in the land development process. Three kinds of agents, namely, residents, farmers, and governments, make their decisions according to their land use–conversion preferences. Through the use of different strategies that are abstracted from actual land transactions in China, the payoffs to farmers and governments in the game of land expropriation are quantified and then the Nash equilibrium solution of the game is worked out. Those cells with mixed strategy Nash equilibrium solutions that include a probability of greater than 0.5 that either governments will expropriate land legally or that farmers will accept the land acquisition of the governments are referred to as “candidate regions for urban expansion.” Based on how they evaluate the “candidate region” condition according to the surrounding environment and land price, residents determine the final land-use transition of each cell in the candidate region that is formed in the previous step. Jiangxia, a suburban area in Wuhan, is used as a case study area to simulate the spatial and temporal dynamics of urban growth. The proposed model, which couples game theory and human decision making in the land-development process, can effectively represent and simulate the spatiotemporal dynamics and patterns of urban growth as well as explain the driving mechanism of urban expansion.

Walking as the major transit access mode confers health benefits to the public while presenting planners with the challenge of overcoming walk-accessibility costs which deter mass-transit use. The literature indicates sidewalk quality, availability, and street network connectedness are crucial access factors in walking to transit stations. However, the literature has not yielded a pragmatic tool for planners to assess walk access to transit stations in these terms. This paper offers a sidewalk availability and quality index (SAQI) and a connectivity index (CI) which grant insight into the pedestrian-rider’s ability to access mass transit through the built environment. The methods are presented through an analysis of the Orange Line bus rapid transit (BRT) in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. The analysis of the Orange Line using the SAQI and CI method determines which stops are least accessible to riders and indicates access solutions by identifying the overriding problem along the axes of quantity, quality, and design. Regression analysis concludes that there is a significant positive relationship between sidewalk connectedness and the use of public transportation, indicating the indices are useful as measures of walk-access costs and predictors of ridership.

Countless cities are rapidly developing across the globe, pressing the need for clear urban-planning and design recommendations geared toward sustainability. This paper examines the intersections of Jane Jacobs’ four conditions for diversity with low-carbon and low-energy-use urban systems in four cities around the world: Lyon (France), Chicago (Illinois), Kolkata (India), and Singapore City (Singapore). After reviewing Jacobs’ four conditions for diversity, the four cities are introduced and their historical development context is described. A framework to study the cities along the following three dimensions is then presented: population and density, infrastructure development/use, and climate and landscape. These cities differ in many respects and their analysis is instructive for many other cities around the globe. Jacobs’ conditions are present in all of them, manifested in different ways and to varying degrees. Overall, the study results show that the adoption of Jacobs’ conditions seems to align well with concepts of low-carbon urban systems, with their focus on walkability, transit-oriented design, and more efficient land use (i.e., smaller unit sizes). Transportation-sector emissions seem to demonstrate a stronger influence from the presence of Jacobs’ conditions, whereas the link was less pronounced in the building sector. Kolkata, a low-income, developing world city, seems to possess many of Jacobs’ conditions, while exhibiting low per-capita emissions—maintaining both of these during its economic expansion will take careful consideration. Greenhouse-gas mitigation, however, is inherently an in situ problem and the first task must therefore be to gain local knowledge of an area before developing strategies to lower its carbon footprint.

With different origins and perspectives, urban sprawl has been recognized as a threat to the quality of life in both developed and emerging countries. However, although in developed countries, the effects of such sprawl have been assessed in terms of extra fuel consumption and traffic congestion, in emerging economies, such effects have not been quantified and analyzed in detail. It was the purpose of this research to estimate the effects of urban sprawl on the transportation costs and fuel consumption in a rapidly growing metropolitan area in Mexico. This was performed through a strategy consisting of applying known analytical methodologies to data that were obtained by direct home surveys. Although the results reveal that such an urban sprawling process represents increases in transportation costs and fuel consumption on the order of 65 and 20%, respectively, it was found that other externalities should be considered in future studies, particularly with respect to the extra costs associated with the transportation of consumption goods in the sprawled areas. Conversely, the results correlate well with data from other emerging economies, but identify specific needs concerning the public transport infrastructure, particularly with regard to optimizing the running frequency of public transportation systems and the consideration of polycentric structures to minimize externalities.

Rapid urban population growth and the associated expansion of urban areas in China (as elsewhere) present significant environmental challenges and threaten urban and regional ecological security. Modeling land use changes is one way to aid the management of cities. Using remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) software platforms, land use data for the years 1989, 1996, 2004, and 2010 for the area inside the Jinan third ring road were interpreted. An urban green space network was developed, as a core strategy to ensure landscape ecological security, and subjected to ecological sensitivity analysis. The green space network and the result of the ecological sensitivity analysis were integrated into the exclusion/attraction layer of an existing cellular automaton model: slope, land use, exclusion/attraction, urban extent, transportation, and hillshade (SLEUTH). A development scenario for land use change was constructed that integrates these landscape ecological security development (LESD) strategies and reveals trends in urban growth for the different development scenarios between 2011 and 2040. The results of the LESD scenario were compared with those from two other development scenarios: the historical trend development (HTD) and the transit-oriented development (TOD). The study revealed three significant findings. First, change in the urban area in the study will be dominated by urban edge growth and transit-oriented development, while spontaneous growth and cluster growth were not obvious. Second, the growth rate of built-up land in the urban area in all three scenarios exhibits emerging trends. The growth rate, according to the LESD scenario, is significantly lower than those for the HTD and TOD scenarios, and encroachment into natural ecological space (such as woodlands, water, and agricultural land) is less than those in the other two scenarios. This result indicates that the LESD scenario can protect natural ecological spaces effectively and can significantly reduce the ecological security risk. This aligns with the integration of smart growth and smart conservation. Third, integrating LESD into the SLEUTH model results in the ability to evaluate urban development policies and can help characterize development strategies for urban landscape ecological security. The results of this study provide reference data and a basis for decision making for the future management of urban growth, urban planning, and land use planning.

This study developed a process model that includes three steps for urban growth simulation. A preprocessing step is required to classify three satellite images acquired in 1990, 2000, and 2009 into six land-use types using remote sensing (RS) and geographic information systems (GIS). The first step of the process model is to project the population using a cohort component method for 2014. The second step is to quantify the demand for urban land use based on a regression model between population and urban land use. The third step is to optimize the weighting values for six criteria using the weighted scenario method (WSM), cellular automata (CA) model, and GIS in order to make a grid-based optimal potential suitability map for urban growth. Two accuracy assessment methods, pixel-by-pixel comparison and calculation of zonal statistics, were adopted to evaluate the accuracy of simulation results. This study also showed that the process model can still be used according to population growth scenarios even if the population increases or decreases suddenly due to socioeconomic or political factors that cannot be projected using the cohort component method.

Following rapid urban expansion, numerous rural villages have been requisitioned for urban development in Chinese cities. During the prevailing urbanization process, displaced farmers within a village are wholly relocated into an urban resettlement housing district in transitional China. This study aims to examine whether those farmers still retain previous widespread and dense social networks in urban environment. The study is primarily a case study in Shanghai; data were obtained through semistructured interviews, questionnaire survey and field observations. The findings show that the urbanization process led by farmland requisition gives rise to four major shifts, which include residence shift from farmhouses to urban apartments, household registration identity shift from peasantry to urbanites, occupation shift from farming to nonfarming jobs, and resident structure shift from single village to multiple sources. Such sociospatial changes have transformed the basis and number of social ties, frequency and places of social contact, assistance available from social networks, and willingness for more social contact. It can be concluded that the vibrant and cohesive rural communities with densely interactive social networks have gradually dissolved in the urban environment during the resettlement from rural villages to urban housing districts.

Land-use patterns are important to urban planning and management and face challenges from market forces, government, and local urban management in Iran. This research examines the problems arising from such issues in the comprehensive urban-planning and management system. The Article Five Commission (AFC) of Tehran is a legal intersectoral institution for urban planning intended to coordinate the actions of organs influential in the development of Tehran. It acts as the supreme decision-making authority for approval of detailed plans and land-use change for the city. The AFC as a legal institution that can take action to preserve sustainable urban development (SUD) by approving or rejecting land-use-change proposals with the goal of preserving the social benefits and public rights of residents. This study evaluated the effective factors for the function and positions of the AFC toward SUD of Tehran. It used an analytical survey that collected data using documentary methods and a questionnaire on the given variables. The authors applied the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis method for data evaluation and weighted factors in accordance with expert opinion. The study shows that, although the AFC acts as a mediator between relevant institutions, not all districts in Tehran follow its policies and coordinative plans. Moreover, the commission itself is under pressure from special interest groups and hidden markets that desire changes in urban use for the exclusive benefit of small groups that may contrast with the benefits to the public.

In the early 2000s, nearly 30% of South Korean cities reportedly shrunk in terms of population, number of enterprises, and property disinvestment. Although many researchers have already documented socioeconomic changes linked with shrinking cities, little is known about how changes in a neighborhood’s built environment influence the process of shrinking within a city’s local context. Here, a neighborhood called Songhyun-dong in Incheon, which was previously one of the busiest mixed-use retail neighborhoods in Korea, was empirically documented through nontechnical analyses of urban-form data for the years of 1937, 1985, 1995, and 2013. It was discovered that urban planners’ institutional response to urban shrinkage, such as development of extensive transport infrastructure and imposition of a rigid gridiron layout, failed to contribute to the recovery of the shrinking neighborhood. The resultant loss of securely-enclosed residential areas and adaptable market-space characteristics has amplified the downward spiral of the shrinking process.

The combined use of a public bicycle system (PBS) and transit is considered a green and efficient travel mode, yet few studies have focused on users’ perceptions of this integrated mode. This study investigated commuters who recently began using PBS to access the metro, referred to herein as the metro-PBS, and commuters who drive to work in suburban Nanjing, China, which is an area where PBS is in early developmental stages. First, a survey was conducted to obtain the personal characteristics of the metro-PBS users and their before-and-after commuting experiences. Then, a comparative analysis was performed, which revealed that saving time, energy, and money are the critical motivating factors of their mode shift behavior. The users’ personal characteristics vary with their previous modes, but the users are generally characterized as well educated with regard to environmental protection. In contrast to many other bike sharing investigations, the results showed a significant motor vehicle trip substitution. Another survey was conducted to investigate drivers’ perceptions of the metro-PBS. Of the respondents, 62.8% exhibited a willingness to change to metro-PBS. A binary logit model was built to reveal the factors affecting mode selection behavior, and the key factors identified were gender, employment status, and the comfort level associated with travel experiences. Male motorists who are lower-level employees or have unpleasant commute experiences are more likely to be attracted to metro-PBS. Based on the findings, suggestions are presented for building a user-friendly metro-PBS system that attracts motorists. This case study concludes that metro-PBS can be an ideal travel mode for suburban commuters and thus can contribute to reducing car travel under some circumstances.