Journal of Urban Planning and Development

This paper investigates how block size influences traffic by dividing the travel distance, time, and number of turning maneuvers into two parts: the one that happens inside the block, and the one outside. We develop analytical formulations that yield representative values of the three aforementioned indicators under low-demand scenarios. A VISSIM simulation with a dynamic traffic assignment is used to verify such values, study the traffic behavior for high-demand scenarios, and evaluate the traffic performance, network capacity, and resiliency. The results indicate that traffic inside the block plays a more important role on the overall performance in networks with larger block size and/or short trips. In addition, smaller block-size networks yield shorter travel distance and better travel accessibility, as well as higher network capacity; whereas larger block-size networks have shorter travel time and smaller number of turnings under low-demand levels. In the congested situation, the larger block-size networks show relatively better performance as they take longer to become congested and gridlocked.

Quality of life is increasingly a concern for city dwellers, and it is widely accepted that it can bring benefits to urban developments. As the only natural element in modern cities, urban parks can provide cultural services that are directly connected with aspects related to quality of life. As a result, studying the cultural services provided by parks could be meaningful for research into quality of life for better urban developments, and China should be a particular area of concern as it largely lacks related academic research. In this study, multiple influential factors are treated as the research objects, and the mechanisms through which these factors act are studied by looking at the matches between demand and satisfaction for cultural services. It is hypothesized that both factors relating to the physical environment and individual human factors need to be considered. Cultural services are classified into psychological, leisure, exercise, and general visit services, and are quantitatively assessed for six typical parks in central Shanghai. From the case study results and the ways in which demand and satisfaction are matched, it turns out that all features of a park, the objectives of visiting a park, and personal characteristics play important role in the evaluation of quality of life, but how visitors understand parks and the financial condition of the park are, in summary, the crucial factors. Besides this, methodologies for the evaluation and theories of the quality of life are discussed, and it is discovered that a subjective questionnaire could be implemented but that it needs to be combined with place-based situations.

As social media platforms are maturing, their approach to location tagging increasingly emphasizes ontologies of named places: cities, neighborhoods, and predefined points of interest. As recently as 2015, millions of Twitter posts per month were tagged with exact coordinates, but these have all but vanished in the US user base. This paper evaluates the changing location content of public posts on Twitter (including cross-posts from Instagram and Foursquare Swarm), and the implications for research that relies on these data sources, using a 36-month sample of 18 million posts from the western US between 2015 and 2018. Place tags range in granularity from country-level to points of interest; the majority of tagged Twitter posts are associated with a city, while points of interest are the most common choice on Instagram. Varying granularity makes it hard to observe end-to-end local travel using these data, but the richer semantic content is an advantage for studying land use or discretionary activity patterns. The shift from exact coordinates to named places provides better location privacy and a better user experience and is aligned with a variety of business incentives. It is likely to be an enduring standard.

This study was conducted to analyze accessibility and service quality of public parks in the city of Khulna, Bangladesh. Compared with industrial and commercial development, there is a little progress in developing recreational facilities (e.g., parks) in the city. However, people need parks for their refreshment from a busy lifestyle. Moreover, parks provide opportunities for gatherings that strengthen community bonding among people. Assessment of accessibility and service quality of parks is an important task that is currently inadequately performed in Khulna city. Different factors (e.g., travel distance, time, mode, and cost) have been considered for analyzing accessibility of the parks. Moreover, service quality, service gap, and level of satisfaction have been taken as factors for analyzing the quality of the parks. A user satisfaction index (USI) has been calculated to assess the level of satisfaction of users regarding existing facilities and the service quality of the parks. In addition, the existing service area of the parks has been calculated using threshold population calculation, buffer analysis, and network analysis. A suitability analysis examined the existing park locations. The study found that there is an insufficient number of public parks in Khulna, and that most parks are located far from the residential area, which reduces accessibility by increasing travel distance and cost. The service quality of the parks is, therefore, unsatisfactory. This study proposes additional parks with better services and facilities to meet demands of people.

Approximately 300,000 gated communities (GCs) are distributed across urban China, presenting challenges to Chinese urban governance. Previous studies show interest in the relationship of GCs and security maintenance, and the role of GCs in the formation of the civil society. However, empirical investigations lacked testing of theory or hypothesis. A survey with 1,781 household questionnaires was conducted to find whether GCs are associated with residents’ security and community consciousness. The “convenience of life” rather than “safety” is the most important factor for residents’ choice of living in China. One possible reason is that the universalization of GCs has led to a lack of perceived security for residents. Further, differences in group consciousness and behavior choice were found between gated and open communities, and the homeowners’ concern for public affairs and participation is obviously insufficient with self-interest characteristics. Thus, it is worth mentioning that a GC is more of a new residential form rather than a space of civil society in China. This is due to the fact that marketization without effective constraints does not bring about the differentiation of social organization, as expected by liberal theorists, but rather creates a form of market hegemony in GCs, which results in the suppression of the development of social organization.

The purpose of this study is to provide a rapid monitoring of the recent patterns and trends of urban growth in the north of Jordan as a result of increasing refugee fluxes from nearby countries due to the Syrian political conflict. A time series of medium spatial resolution optical satellite images have been used to describe change events in the study area. These satellite images, obtained from different sensors and which were acquired for the years 2010 and 2015, cover four governorates in the north of Jordan. Supervised classification and change analysis are used to detect if there is any expansion of urban areas in the region. The results indicate that most of the extensions and developments are in the urban fringe where the agricultural lands, range lands, bare soil, and rural settlements are converted to urban. A postclassification comparison reveals an increase in urban areas by 7.8% during the study period. The used control area in this study is recommended for future continued monitoring as the final destination of future refugees is not clear and cannot be specified from the beginning.

In the context of globalization, cities have undergone a polarization of growth and shrinkage. Urban shrinkage is typically measured by a decrease in population. However, city activity is usually ignored. Accordingly, this study measured city shrinkage in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River based on whether city activities and population shrank from 2000 to 2010. This study drew on the Cobb-Douglas production function using multiple big data [such as nighttime light (NTL) data, patent data, and land transaction data] to calculate a city activity index to examine city activity. The geographically weighted regression (GWR) model was applied to explore the influencing factors of city shrinkage. Results showed the following: (1) in the area of study, 14.87% of cities experienced population loss, considering the city activities, an increase in the latter accounted for 57.36% in depopulation cities; (2) urban shrinkage spatial pattern presented the feature of “overall growth, local shrinkage”; (3) in the urban shrinkage regression model, urban spatial expansion and the increase in secondary industry population were factors that aggravated urban shrinkage. The main influencing factors of city shrinkage in the regions are different and need to be studied in-depth and meticulously in combination with the local development situation. This study plays a vital role in characterizing city activities and identifying urban shrinkage while providing a reference for urban planning and policy setting.

The focus of this research is to investigate the influence of land use and network characteristics within the proximal area of a road link on travel time. Data for 259 links within the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, were used for the analysis. Thirty-five different types of land use characteristics were considered in this research. The proximal spatial dependency was examined by considering and capturing the land use characteristics within 0.805 km (0.5 mi), 1.61 km (1 mi), 3.22 km (2 mi), and 4.83 km (3 mi) of the selected links. Network characteristics of the upstream, downstream, cross-street, and intersecting links were also considered to incorporate the spatial dependency. Models were developed by including all the predictor variables (backward elimination) and also by selecting the predictor variables that are not correlated to each other based on the Pearson correlation coefficients. In addition to modeling using data for all the selected links, the influence of land use and network characteristics on travel time was examined by classifying the links based on the area type [central business district (CBD), CBD fringe/other business district (OBD), and urban area] and also by classifying the links based on the speed limit [56.4 or 64.4 km/h (35 or 40 mph), 72.5 or 80.5 km/h (45 or 50 mph), and >80.5 km/h (50 mph)]. Log-link with the gamma distribution model was observed to best fit the data used in this research. The results indicate that different sets of land use and network characteristics contribute to the average travel time when modeled by the buffer width. The influence of land use characteristics was observed to vary by the area type in which the link is located and the speed limit of the link. A 1-mile buffer width was observed as the best proximal area to capture land use characteristics and to estimate the average travel time at a link level. The findings help the practitioners in land use and transportation planning decisions.

The growing market demand for pedestrian and transit-oriented communities can be capitalized into higher housing values and can generate much-needed revenue for shrinking cities. Few studies, however, have examined sufficiently walkability and its economic outcomes, especially for shrinking cities. Using geographically weighted regression (GWR) models, this study examines the impact of neighborhood walkability, measured by Walk Score and an accessibility–walkability index constructed for shrinking cities on property values of single-family and duplex homes in three rust belt shrinking cities—Buffalo (New York), Pittsburgh, and Detroit. The results suggest that, controlling for spatial autocorrelation effects, GWR models perform more robustly than the traditional ordinary least-squares models. The findings showed that the impact of walkability on single and two-family housing sales in these three cities is significant. Our findings highlight the economic premium of safe and pedestrian-oriented communities in the housing market of shrinking cities and provide validated and empirical evidence for policy implications and approaches that help promote more walkable communities for the redevelopment of shrinking cities.

In recent years, the Chinese government has introduced relevant real estate policies to control the rapid rise of house prices, but with little effect. The success of regulation largely depends on the active participation of real estate developers. However, how to encourage developers to actively participate in regulation is under-explored. To fill this gap, we use the Nash game to explore the reasons for the failure of house price regulation, and then design a reward–punishment mechanism to urge real estate developers to actively implement regulatory policies. Our analysis shows that the passive participation of real estate developers leads to the failure of regulation. The established reward and punishment mechanism, if a considerable amount of reward and punishment is formulated, can effectively prompt developers to actively implement policies. These findings are of great value to promote the healthy development of the real estate market.

The city is an intertwined network constructed in a limited space by such economic markets as housing, labor, land, and transportation. The emergence of the city is a sign of civilization representing a higher form of human society. The development of cities plays an important role in regional and national economies. This paper investigates factors influencing urban agglomeration from the perspective of economic and population agglomeration. The authors selected 285 prefecture-level cities in China as a research sample and used the System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) for regression analysis. The results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between housing prices and urban economic agglomeration in mid-western and eastern cities. However, an inverted U-shaped relationship was observed between housing prices and population agglomeration in the eastern cities and a U-shaped relationship in the mid-western cities of China. The influence of housing prices on population agglomeration can be divided into two periods. When housing prices were low, the population flowed from the mid-western to the eastern cities. When housing prices were high, people left the eastern cities and returned to the mid-western cities. However, under the influence of regulatory policies by the government, labor flowed back from the mid-western cities to the eastern cities.

The planning of a metro network layout is important in alleviating traffic congestion, guiding land exploitation, and promoting urban development. This paper proposes a hybrid model of two-phase formulation based on path searching to determine the structure layout of a metro network. A selection of origin–destination (O–D) pairs is first performed to filter out ineffective O–D pairs outside of the major distance range of metro trips, where the distance is calculated under p-norm. To further reduce the searching space, a K-shortest paths (KSP) algorithm is devised to generate the subnetwork for each O–D pair. As a rapid transit network design problem (RTNDP), the model is formulated in two phases by integer programming. The optimal path of each O–D pair is determined in phase 1 considering objectives of construction cost and nodes demand capture, and a constraint of the path length control is specially constructed to avoid bad solutions with meandering paths. In phase 2, a model is developed to integrate optimal links into a network depending on the aggregate transit demand under constraints such as link capacity and graph connectivity. Meanwhile, the procedures of the model and algorithm are comprehensively designed, with interactions between the geographic information system (GIS) database and mathematical programming solvers. Finally, applications of the two-phase model are illustrated with a real example. The evaluation results indicate that the proposed model can enhance the network connectivity and line capacity usage, and fit better with the transit demand inside the urban area.

“Smart growth” is an urban planning concept, valuing long-range sustainability of the city’s growth over short-term expansion, its focus embracing the 3Es of evaluation dimensions: i.e., economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental sustainability, each consisting of multiple indicators emphasizing heterogeneous aspects of the dimensions. In this study, 10 indicators are selected and a metric model is proposed to quantify a city’s development pattern with respect to smart growth criteria, followed by a growth model evaluating the patterns toward the 3Es of the smart growth. The models are then tested in two cities (Dunhuang, China, and Bonn, Germany). Their magnitudes in smart growth are measured by evaluating their current growth plans in the light of the smart growth metrics. Results of the robust test for population expansion for each city indicate that the method proposed in this study is, in fact, quite effective in evaluating the smart growth pattern for medium-sized cities.

Urban public spaces, especially in big cities, are the spaces most prone to criminal activities. Parks are among the most important public spaces designed for walking, sport, and other recreational activities of an urban population. However, lack of adequate security and surveillance services, especially at night, makes these areas more suitable for illicit and criminal activities. In this article, we proposed and apply a geostatistical approach to study and analyze the distribution of criminal activities in urban parks with respect to their proximity to city centers. As a case study, 24 criteria were selected to evaluate and assess distribution of crimes in Tehran parks using the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE) model. The obtained results revealed that five parks had “very suitable” conditions and eight parks had “suitable conditions,” whereas 12 parks had “relatively suitable” conditions. Nine and seven parks had “unsuitable” and “very unsuitable” conditions, respectively, for the presence of citizens in the studied parks. In addition, the results of data analyzed in the Geographical Information System (GIS) using kernel density mode demonstrated that security of parks decreased the farther away they situated from the center of city and with reduction of population density.

The design of accessible walking routes needs to take into account the different stakeholders' preferences and factors affecting walking. It is a complex issue which policy-makers should deal with to foster sustainable mobility. A participatory multicriteria decision analysis approach is presented to help the planning and designing of pedestrian routes, based on a sound analysis of factors affecting walking behavior and the attributes of the roads, and a stakeholder-driven evaluation of the same. A group of different stakeholders has been involved to select the criteria for designing pedestrian routes in the city center of Cartagena (Colombia). Some of them have been selected based on the results of a social network analysis (SNA) to be involved as key stakeholders for the evaluation of the selected criteria through an analytic network process (ANP). An index to measure the importance of each criterion in designing pedestrian routes has been obtained. Results provide valuable inputs to understand how to redesign and reconfigure streets for pedestrians in a city so as to improve walkability and foster a shift toward active and sustainable transport modes.

Escalating transport energy demand is one of the major issues for Kathmandu Valley, with a rapid increment in automobilization and urban sprawl. The Kathmandu Valley is the center for economic activities, where work trips have a dominant share. In this context, this paper aims to study the role of urban form on the travel energy of work trips in Kathmandu Valley, using the Energy Performance Index as an indicator. Trip data of workers were collected from a household survey, carried out in different parts of the study area, using random sampling. The correlation analysis shows that population density and public transport accessibility have little impact on travel energy, whereas increasing distance from the central business district is found to have a significant rise in travel energy. Further, mode choice and trip distance of work trips were analyzed with respect to urban form and socioeconomic factors. The paper concludes with the recommendations for urban planning policies to minimize urban transport energy demand.

Although an increase in the number of dockless shared-bicycle services improves convenience for users, the disorderly parking of bicycles has seriously invaded public space in many cities. To avoid having bicycles occupying public space and to optimize bicycle density, a questionnaire survey is administered to explore the relationship between bicycle density and bicycle utilization. Based on pedestrian traffic attributes and the evolutionary theory of risk formation in crowd accidents, an impact function that aims to capture how public bicycle density reduces the comfort and safety of public spaces and affects the utilization of such spaces is fitted. A model is built to optimize bicycle density based on operators' profits, users' utilization, public space occupancy costs, and safety/accident rate.

This study aims at assessing the landscape condition of the Wadi Araba to enhance the tourism industry in this area. A qualitative research design based on landscape character assessment has been implemented to explore the current condition of the natural features, protected areas, and urban settlements. Then, the geographic information system (GIS) has been used for recording the collected information. The study reveals that many components of the Wadi Araba landscapes are hidden, fragmented, and underdeveloped, which negatively affected the tourism industry in the area of study. The natural environment, as well as the urban settlements, are randomly scattered in the desert and segregated from their surroundings, socially and economically. Given this, the study proposes a tourist track that links these fragmented areas. Connecting the urban settlements with the protected zones would enhance the tourism industry in Wadi Araba, create job opportunities to locals, and enhance the sense of pleasure for visitors.

This paper examines the development trends of urban construction land in 17 cities within the Shandong province, China, and uses multivariate linear regression, a geographical detector, and a spatial neighborhood analysis to determine the spatiotemporal driving mechanisms of construction land development from 1985 to 2015. The results reveal clear differences in the scale, rate, direction, and stability of urban construction land, and the 17 cities investigated were divided into four development models, including the uncoordinated wave cities (Jinan, Yantai, and Weifang), uncoordinated stable cities (Zibo, Rizhao, Linyi, Dongying, and Binzhou), coordinated wave cities (Qingdao, Zaozhuang, Taian, Laiwu, Weihai, and Liaocheng), and coordinated stable cities (Jining, Dezhou, and Heze). A number of temporal driving factors affected the expansion scale of urban construction land, including the natural population growth rate, employment index, second industry structure ratio, and firm size index, whereas the spatial driving factors that affected the spatial pattern of urban construction land included the distance to the main railway, distance to the main road, and distance to the city center. Next, points were assigned to different levels of characteristics and spatiotemporal driving factors of the urban construction land, a composite score of urban development was obtained, and the 17 cities were divided into the following zones: core trading (Qingdao), key development (Jinan and Yantai), industrial cluster (Jining, Laiwu, Linyi, Weifang, Weihai, and Zibo), and conserving economic zones (which included the remaining eight cities). Different functions and development directions should be considered in these different zones. For instance, more international trade markets should be built in Qingdao to promote the export of industrial products, whereas Jinan and Yantai should target development into megacities, and provide technical guidance and industry driving for the surrounding cities. Finally, the study recommends the intensive use of land, industrial transformation, and upgrading, as well as multifunctional development planning and building a multidimensional transportation network to promote coordinated and integrated development in Shandong province.

Promotion of the sustainability and inclusiveness of the economy, society, and environment is important. However, China suffers from different overlapping and conflicting plans, which hinders its ability to achieve sustainable and inclusive development. To resolve these problems, China has made serious efforts to explore the methods for coordinating various planning from theory to practice. Reasonable spatial planning within China’s rapid urbanization process will promote the sustainable development of cities in China, balance the relationship between environmental protection and urban growth, and promote the coordinated development of urban and rural areas. Different plans can be classified as either development or control plans, and when conflicts appear between the two kinds of planning in a regional planning context, the two can be analyzed separately. This paper begins by examining the conflicts that arise in development and control planning. Moreover, maintaining an area designated for flexibility between control and development planning makes spatial planning more achievable. This paper takes Yiwu city as a case to identify the “patch–corridor–matrix” spatial planning framework based on control, development, and flexible areas.

Development for townships is an important driving force for new-type urbanization of China. However, it appears that the level of the development between different towns is severely unbalanced. This unbalanced development phenomenon has resulted in various problems such as poor living environment and brain drain in less developed towns. This paper introduces a framework for examining the unbalanced development phenomenon between towns. By using the framework, the degree of unbalanced development between towns in the Southwest region of China has been investigated, and the reasons contributing to the unbalanced phenomenon are discussed in depth. Indicators for examining the level of township development are selected from three dimensions, namely, development scale, economic development level, and social development level. The data applied for analysis are collected from 16 sample towns in Southwest China. Research methods of PCA and TOPSIS are employed collectively to assist the analysis. The parameter of variable coefficient is used to measure the degree of unbalanced development between towns. Onsite surveys as well as in-depth semistructured interviews are conducted in these sample towns to support the discussions on the analysis results. The findings indicate that the unbalanced development between towns in Southwest China is very significant in economic standard and development scales, whilst the social development is reasonably balanced. Various contributing reasons for the unbalanced development phenomenon are analyzed, and it is suggested that policy-related factors have a key influence. Research findings provide government departments with valuable references to implement effective policy measures for promoting balanced development between towns in the urbanizing China.

This paper analyses urban village redevelopment projects (UVRPs) in contemporary China using a case-based analysis method. Based on the data collected from 394 UVRPs in Zhejiang province, we reveal that the top-down institutional arrangement is the dominant method for redevelopment of urban villages. Wenzhou city is picked as an example to explore the drivers, policies, and barriers for UVRP implementation under the top-down institutional arrangement. According to the secondary data of government policies and documents, striking the balance of social, economic, and ecological benefits to achieve more sustainable and new-type urbanization is found to be the main stimulus. Grounded in the original fieldwork conducted in 26 urban villages in Wenzhou, this study unravels how the policies for UVRPs are formed and implemented. As for the barriers, from the perspective of villagers, social disputes are caused by the unclear definition of legal property rights, the demand for the construction of temporary relocation housing for the elderly, and the high construction costs of relocated high-rise buildings. The government blames the unruly villagers or nail householders for their excessive requests which increase the transaction costs for settling these issues. Besides, poorly designed policies impede policy implementation. In view of the high costs of policy alteration, the lock-in effects or policy continuity preferred by the government echo the institutional equilibrium put forward by North.

Urban shrinkage has become a global phenomenon. However, the impact of urban shrinkage on residents' lives has not received enough attention from scholars and urban policymakers. This paper explores the extent to which urban shrinkage has an impact on residents' quality of life, and the ways in which it does so. Taking a typical shrinking city, Yichun, as an example, the statistical data and microblog data are used to quantitatively assess the impact of urban shrinkage on residents' objective and subjective quality of life and analyze the spatial–temporal evolution of residents' objective and subjective quality of life. The results indicate that urban shrinkage affects residents' quality of life, but the variation trend of objective quality of life is not necessarily consistent with that of subjective quality of life. In addition, the degree of urban shrinkage has a significant effect on residents' quality of life. The more severe the urban shrinkage, the more significant the impact on residents' quality of life.

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a concept that provides individualized choices for multimodal shared trips and has been extended with growing applications in large cities and metropolitan areas around the world. However, it is challenging to implement MaaS in small urban and rural areas that cover the vast majority of the land area in the US that have different user characteristics and availability of public transportation services. Using the state of Wisconsin as an example, this study aims to identify critical issues affecting the implementation of MaaS from both the demand side and the supply side as well as proposing strategies for these identified issues. An advisory committee of eight members representing Wisconsin agencies and organizations was employed to gain insights into problems and issues associated with the implementation of MaaS in small towns and rural areas in Wisconsin. Three advisory committee meetings were held to assist the research team in (1) background analysis, which explores sociodemographic, economic, and technological changes in Wisconsin (phase I), (2) problem identification, which defines the MaaS concept and conducts a feasibility analysis from policy and planning to implementation issues (phase II), and (3) strategy development, which develops potential strategies responding to the problems identified in phase II (phase III). Critical issues in small urban and rural communities include an aging population, lack of public transport travel experience, limited smartphone service availability, municipal boundaries, funding issues, staff availability, limited capacity, and technical capabilities. Corresponding to these critical issues, response strategies include collaboration between stakeholders, tailored service packages, user interface design, and pilot projects. The research findings could provide implications for other local governments, transportation service providers, and MaaS integrators in the country to develop MaaS schemes in small urban and rural communities.