Waddell This Urban Research Initiative (URI) project develops a new approach to assess two particular linkages that are central to the development of more sophisticated and integrated urban dynamic models in the domain of interactions between the human, built, and natural environments. In particular, the linkages between land use and transportation, and between land use and land cover will be investigated, with focus on the development of reusable modeling components that provide flexibility in analyzing common problems. The specific research questions that will be probed using the modeling components address how resolution and scale of space, time, and behavior affect the result of the analysis.
Land use patterns interact strongly with many other properties of urban areas, including transportation patterns, social capital, air and water quality, and stresses on natural ecosystems. This interaction is complex, e.g., land use patterns strongly affect transportation patterns, which affect air quality and other environmental factors, which in turn affect land use patterns. Similarly, land use, land cover, and environmental stressors are strongly interdependent, and developing a land use-land cover model provides a foundation for modeling urban-environmental interactions. Despite these complex interactions, in most urban models land use is considered an exogenous variable, that is, the land use patterns are simply input into the model without accounting for feedback.
In this research, modeling components will be developed by extending the UrbanSim land use simulation model, and adding generalization of the underlying data structures and behavior using object oriented programming methods. The results of the project will be twofold. First, a set of reusable modeling components will be produced for the development of integrated models of the dynamic interactions between the human, build, and natural environments. The software and documentation will be freely available via the Internet. Second, these modeling components will be applied to develop integrated land use-transportation models and also land use-land cover models. A key aspect of this research will be the cultivation of partnerships with metropolitan Planning Organizations that will participate in the design and testing of the models developed within this project. ***
