A dynamic model of land use transition to achieve sustainable outcomes for urban travel behavior.

摘要

Sustainable development has been highlighted as a guiding principle for addressing the issues associated with rapid urbanization and the environmental problems that often accompany it. Although sustainability has been defined and discussed for almost a quarter century, operationalization of sustainable development has been fraught with its conceptual ambiguities. The objective of this research is to develop a set of spatial dynamic simulation models that can simulate alternative development patterns by using New Urbanist principles related to travel behavior such as urban development with mixed land use, high density and easy access to transit systems. The approach adopted for this research integrates empirical and simulation methods to address specific planning interventions that can lead to sustainable travel behavior. A framework for examining sustainability in land use and transportation relationship is developed with the help of an empirical model based on data from the Phoenix metropolitan area. Based on the result of the empirical model, spatial dynamic simulation models are developed for the Phoenix area using complex system theories--cellular automata and genetic algorithms. The simulation shows that urban sprawl and auto-dependent development will continue for the Phoenix area if there is no planning intervention. However, alternative urban development simulation shows how different planning options could lead to sustainable travel behavior. The results of simulation demonstrate that the models developed for this study are applicable for operationalizing sustainability related to land use and transportation interaction. The implementation of the models is expected to be a significant advance in the practice of sustainable development in fast growing regions like the Phoenix area.