Browsing by Subject "Urban sprawl"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Anticipating land-use impacts of self-driving vehicles in the Austin, Texas, region
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2020) Wellik, Tyler; Kockelman, Kara
    This paper used an implementation of the land-use model SILO in Austin, Texas, over a 27-year period with an aim to understand the impacts of the full adoption of self-driving vehicles on the region's residential land use. SILO was integrated with MATSim for the Austin region. Land-use and travel results were generated for a business-as-usual case (BAU) of 0% self-driving or "autonomous" vehicles (AVs) over the model timeframe versus a scenario in which households’ value of travel time savings (VTTS) was reduced by 50% to reflect the travel-burden reductions of no longer having to drive. A third scenario was also compared and examined against BAU to understand the impacts of rising vehicle occupancy (VO) and/or higher roadway capacities due to dynamic ride-sharing (DRS) options in shared AV (SAV) fleets. Results suggested an 8.1% increase in average work-trip times when VTTS fell by 50% and VO remained unaffected (the 100% AV scenario) and a 33.3% increase in the number of households with "extreme work-trips" (over 1 hour, each way) in the final model year (versus BAU of 0% AVs). When VO was raised to 2.0 and VTTS fell instead by 25% (the "Hi-DRS" SAV scenario), average work-trip times increased by 3.5% and the number of households with "extreme work-trips" increased by 16.4% in the final model year (versus BAU of 0% AVs). The model also predicted 5.3% fewer households and 19.1% more available, developable land in the city of Austin in the 100% AV scenario in the final model year relative to the BAU scenario’s final year, with 5.6% more households and 10.2% less developable land outside the city. In addition, the model results predicted 5.6% fewer households and 62.9% more available developable land in the city of Austin in the Hi-DRS SAV scenario in the final model year relative to the BAU scenario’s final year, with 6.2% more households and 9.9% less developable land outside the city.
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    Counterpoint: Accessibility and Sprawl
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2008) Crane, Randall
    This essay provides a counterpoint to Robert Bruegmann's perspective on accessibility and sprawl in this journal volume. Bruegmann's recent work on the history of urban form situates contemporary discussions of sprawl in a well-researched historical context; however, this essay takes a different perspective on several key points in Bruegmann's analysis, particularly in relation to cost-benefit analysis for transportation-disadvantaged populations.
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    Data for Discovery and Decision-Making: LakeSuperiorStreams.org
    (University of Minnesota Duluth, 2010) Axler, Richard P; Will, Norman; Henneck, Jerald; Carlson, Todd; Ruzycki, Elaine; Host, George E; Sjerven, Gerald; Schomberg, Jesse; Kleist, Chris; Hagley, Cynthia
    An estimated 720 perennial and 127 intermittent streams flow into L. Superior, including 309 trout streams and their tributaries (>2100 miles) along the North Shore and St. Louis River Estuary alone. Bedrock escarpments create a high density of stream corridors in forested watersheds with steep gradients, thin erodible soils, typically low productivity, and “flashy” hydrology. These high-quality trout streams are sensitive to urbanization and rural development by factors raising water temperature and increasing water and sediment runoff, e.g. openings in riparian cover/canopy, impervious surfaces, road crossings, construction runoff, and the warming and increased frequency of severe storms predicted by climate change models (Wuebbles & Hayhoe 2003). Tributary streams are increasingly threatened by development as urbanization and rural development place increased pressure on the Lake Superior region’s coastal communities. Between 1992 and 2001, a 33% increase in low-intensity development occurred within the basin with an alarming transition from agricultural lands to urban/suburban sprawl (Wolter et al. 2007). In the early 1990s, over 50 new lodging establishments were constructed along the Superior North Shore, and from 1990-1996 Cook County, MN experienced a 24% population increase (MPCA 2000). Stream fish, amphibians, and the invertebrates that sustain them are being adversely impacted by increased temperature, excessive peak flows, turbidity and suspended solids, road salts, organic matter, and nutrients from increased development (Anderson et al. 2003). This conclusion is supported by the fact that 11 of 27 major Minnesota North Shore trout streams have been listed as Impaired (2010) since the 1990s and remain on the State 303(d) list - primarily for turbidity, temperature, and fish tissue-Hg. The integrity of these watersheds is also critical to the condition of the coastal and offshore waters of Lake Superior. The streams discharge directly into the nutrient and sediment sensitive coastal zone of ultra-oligotrophic L. Superior, or indirectly into the lake via the St. Louis River Estuary, itself an IJC designated Area of Concern and a zero discharge (of persistent organic pollutants (IJC 1999; MPCA 2000), in part because of its levels of phosphorus and suspended sediment. This is particularly important because the lake’s nearshore zone is the source of much of its biological productivity and recreational use, but is nutrient deficient and therefore, very sensitive to excess inputs of nutrients, suspended solids, turbidity and organic matter (e.g. Sterner et al. 2004; Rose and Axler 1998). Therefore, despite the fact that Lake Superior and its tributaries are among the most pristine waters in Minnesota and in the entire Great Lakes Basin, some of these resources are already stressed by increased urbanization and tourism. This creates the unusual challenge of how to inform the public, businesses, and local units of government (LGUs) that these resources need protection when few problems are obvious to the untrained eye. This project has built on the foundation established by the award-winning project www.LakeSuperiorStreams.org (LSS) that was created in 2002 via an EPA grant to a Partnership of the City of Duluth Stormwater Utility, the University of Minnesota –Duluth (Natural Resources Research Institute, Minnesota Sea Grant, and Department of Education), the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (Duluth Office), the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District, the Great Lakes Aquarium, and the Lake Superior Zoo (Axler et al. 2006, 2003; Lonsdale et al. 2006). The original partnership has remained substantially intact since 2002. The ultimate goal continues to be to improve environmental decision-making by: (1) Enhancing public understanding of the connections between weather, hydrology, land use and the condition of water resources in urban and rural watersheds, and (2) Providing easy access to tools for accomplishing the protection of un-impaired resource and cost-effective restoration of degraded sites.
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    Economic growth and urban metamorphosis: A quarter century of transformations within the metropolitan area of Bucharest
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2018) Toșa, Cristian; Mitrea, Andrei; Sato, Hitomi; Miwa, Tomio; Morikawa, Takayuki
    This paper concentrates explicitly on examining the structural and functional transformations occurring within the metropolitan area of Bucharest, resulting from sustained economic growth during the past quarter century, by conducting a time analysis, spanning the entire period since the fall of the communist regime in late 1989. Cities in developed countries of Western Europe and Asia experienced rapid economic growth during the second half of the 20th century and exhibited novel patterns of evolution in terms of urban form and associated functional characteristics. Lately, these patterns have become manifest in Bucharest as well. However, transformations in human, social, residential, and transportation supply capital are difficult to observe directly. Hence, our methodology concentrates on studying interactions between several proxies connected to economic development within the metropolitan area of Bucharest. This paper should be read as an exploratory study that buttresses the assumption that improved economic well-being, when accompanied by the transition between a centrally planned economy to a market economy, increases motorization rates, while at the same time triggering a sharp decline in the use of public transport and contributing to aggressive urban sprawl processes. Moreover, hopefully it will guide future research dedicated to forecasting urban expansion paths and their determinants. Hopefully, it also informs policy design intended to promote sustainable urban mobility and accessibility.
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    The Five Minute City
    (2022-12) Shitta, Nardos
    Communication and transportation have been the driving forces of city territory expansion. The history of cities has a stark difference between pre and post-vehicular expansion. Studies have shown that people historically are willing to travel up to 30 minutes to get to their destination; the ground covered is relative to the mode of transportation. Where the walking man covers about 3 miles (5km) in 30 minutes, the driving man can cover anywhere from 24-35 miles. This mode of transportation creates an urban territory that expands beyond pedestrian reach. In the United States, this phenomenon has escalated with freeways and highways. The strategy has become to work toward getting from A to B in the fastest way possible rather than bringing A and B closer together. This is evident in the urban sprawl patterns of cities, with a single node for vast territories. “Moses created a city for vehicles and not people, putting high-speed traffic corridors straight through formerly bustling areas of commerce, recreation, and residences.” (Christina H. Fuller and Doug Brugge, 2020). On the other hand, strategies like Paris’ 15-minute city and Ethiopia's Harrar Jugol formed based on a city for pedestrians and showed more human-scale development of cities. Modern-day city design has put the vehicle at the forefront. Inevitably disrupting the walking man territory “new highways were built through old neighborhoods to connect urban areas by car” (Christina H. Fuller and Doug Brugge, 2020). This thesis seeks to study what a modern-day city would look like if it were designed for pedestrians instead of vehicles. It aims to use a cross-cultural examination of urbanism by comparing two cities, Minneapolis and Addis Ababa, and exploring how land use and transportation can create the five-minute city. Keywords: Urban sprawl, transportation, car-centric, communication, 5-minute city
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    The influence of transport infrastructures on land-use conversion decisions within municipal plans
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2014) Padeiro, Miguel
    Transit-oriented development (TOD) is one of the most popular means of public intervention in the field of spatial planning, which aims at reducing land consumption caused by urban sprawl. In this paper, a logit model is computed to assess whether the Municipal Master Plans approved during the 1990s in the Lisbon region (Portugal), currently in force, contemplated public transit stations as a relevant requirement for the location of the planned urban expansion areas and, more specifically, for the conversion of non-urban areas to artificialized areas. It is shown that TOD was not taken as a preferential approach, suggesting that there may be at the outset an inherent resistance to public injunctions on limiting land-use conversion, regardless of other obstacles frequently mentioned.
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    The interaction of spatial planning and transport policy: A regional perspective on sprawl
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2014) Kulmer, Veronika; Koland, Olivia; Steininger, Karl; Fürst, Bernhard; Käfer, Andreas
    Urban sprawl is caused by the interlinkage of spatial planning and transport characteristics. However, there are only a few approaches that quantify the cross-impacts of policy options in these two spheres. The purpose of this paper is thus a combined regional analysis of spatial planning instruments and transport policy, with a special emphasis on urban–rural diversities. We link a multi-region computable general equilibrium model that incorporates elements of the new economic geography with a transport forecast model. The general equilibrium model illustrates residential choice between urban and peripheral regions, while the transport model depicts the transport implications thereof. Our results suggest that transport policy is obviously effective in addressing transport externalities, while it would have to be set at a politically infeasible stringency to have an effect on residential patterns. As for spatial planning instruments (i.e., expanding housing supply in central regions or limiting it in peripheral regions), we find a strong potential to influence residential choice and hence urban sprawl. Along this line, spatial planning instruments do have a small but still significant impact on reducing transport volume and number of trips. This impact can be enhanced by a policy promoting public transport
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    Point: Sprawl and Accessibility
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2008) Bruegmann, Robert
    This essay argues that many of the assumptions that have been made about sprawl are misleading or just wrong. Nowhere has this been more the case than in debates about transportation and access. Because of this, it is not surprising that a good many of the policies advocated by proponents of Smart Growth would almost certainly lead to reduced mobility and impaired accessibility for a large part of the population. At very least, the debates over sprawl have pitted private vs. public transportation in a way that has contributed to serious underfunding of transportation infrastructure of all kinds.