Keywords: transport modelling, urban planning

Keywords: equity, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, canada, smart growth

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: general interest, history, transport planning, urban planning

Interesting data, but hard to draw many conclusions. The regression model's pooling of data is very dodgy... the 1982-1992 data points and 1992-1997 likely have correlated error terms. I imagine the data has issues, too-I'm wary of urban density figures, particularly when they don't define them carefully and had to analyse every area in the United States. There are interesting insights, though, particularly regarding Hawaii, Washington, and Florida. Florida limits development to areas with adequate infrastructure... but includes “high level-of-service roads” as part of the definition, excluding inner-city and dense areas with congested roads!

Keywords: urban planning, smart growth

Keywords: streets, urban planning, street design

Keywords: public participation, urban planning

Keywords: urban form, urban planning

Keywords: urban form, urban planning, history

The past 10 years have seen the publication of a whole range of books from the US dealing with the loss of place in one way or the other. The books under review were, in general, written for broad audiences and are, in many cases, campaign documents. Their success and substantial number indicate an unease, which many academic texts cannot formulate. They are in this way evidence, in just the same way as were The Death and Life of Great American Cities or Edge City. This European-based review will critically review these recent books in an attempt to highlight their common threads. While the books show particular concern for the poverty of current urban and suburban environments, they lack any substantial discussion of the economic mechanisms which are reproducing the undesired results. They are also unaware of the recent developments in communications and transport technologies, which have considerable potential to influence future trends, which will be discussed in the review. Also included in the review are a number of transport-oriented books, as they formulate a different aspect of the same concern about the built environment.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, general interest

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, canada

Keywords: urban planning, streets, street design, pedestrian planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, urban design

Keywords: smart growth, urban planning

Keywords: land use transport link, urban planning

Keywords: transit, urban planning, transport planning

The fundamental dilemma in attempts to make urban development less dependent upon mobility by car is the inability of alternatives to match the quality of accessibility provided by private motorized transport. Failure to recognize this means that bringing about environmentally more sustainable urban mobility patterns is only possible at economic, social, and political costs that are unacceptable in most societies. In this paper we identify and discuss ways out of this dilemma, in the form of solutions that pursue the goal of increasing both sustainability and accessibility. We start by contending that what people ask is not a generic mobility, but rather opportunities to participate in spatially disjointed activities. Accordingly, accessibility should be defined as the amount and the diversity of 'spatial opportunities' that can be reached within a certain amount of time. Solutions to the accessibility - sustainability dilemma building upon this perspective (that is, planning concepts, policy measures) have been the object of recent research at the Universiteit van Amsterdam and are discussed and we look for, and find, evidence of the feasibility of these solutions in the actual trends in the Amsterdam urban region. Some policy implications of the findings are discussed.

They define accessibility as the “amount of `spatial opportunities' that can be reached within a certain amount of time,” an idea that matches my intuition. They base this on three assumptions about human behaviour: (a) For the most part people travel not just for the sake of it, but in order to participate in spatially disjointed activities (for example, living, working, shopping, visiting in different places); (b) People want to have a choice among as large a number and as diverse a range of activities as possible; (c) Travel costs, and particularly travel time rather than travel distance, set a limit to these possibilities (in the form of total daily travel-time budgets, travel-to-work time budgets, etc.). They also aim for a synergy with sustainability, and express their goal as “Developing conditions for as large as possible a share of the more environmentally friendly modes in urban mobility, while at the same time maintaining, and possible increasing, the amount and the diversity of activity places that can be reached within an acceptable travel time.” They note that “only activities with middle to high spatial reach and low intensity of use (for example, living, working, or recreating in low densities) are best served by the car system”... which would include hiking, I suppose. “[T]he most significant policy dealing with car environments has been the regulation of parking allowance, which has proved an invaluable tool in managing the accessibility of locations, most notably within the municipality of Amsterdam.” They close with an interesting note: they call the transport system the supply of mobility, and land-use patterns are the origin of the demand for mobility. It's an interesting and relevant labelling.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, accessibility

'Opting for urbanity' is the main thread running through the Amsterdam structure plan currently under preparation. But what is 'urbanity'? How is it emerging in a multi-centred region? What spatial planning implications does it entail? These questions were at the outset of a research study commissioned by the municipality of Amsterdam to the Amsterdam study centre for the Metropolitan Environment (AME) and summarized in this article. There are two main conclusions. The first is that traditional inside out development strategies-accommodating the expansion of a single core and its periphery-must be substituted by outside in development strategies, seeking to achieve a new synergy among different sub-centres and places at the urban-regional level. The second is that new sub-centres will have to be developed as real centres of urbanity instead of as mono-functional islands, as currently still the case. In order to implement these strategies the municipality needs to enter coalitions with a variety of public and private actors, spanning different spatial scales and policy sectors.

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: equity, gender, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: history, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link

The chapter I've read (2) was a fairly technical look at modelling the impacts of land use changes on travel demand.

Keywords: transport planning, transport modelling, urban planning, land use transport link

Growing concerns about traffic congestion and rapid suburban expansion (also known as sprawl) have reignited interest in the ways in which highway spending affects metropolitan growth patterns. This discussion paper extracts the best evidence to date on how highway investments distribute growth and economic activity across metropolitan areas. The paper also offers ideas on how transportation financing and policies can better respond to the various costs and benefits of highway projects in a region.

I didn't get much new from this paper... but there were some good references, like Moh93 and a range of land use impact studies.

It is interesting to see two authors with economics backgrounds write on this subject, and state that highway systems redistribute growth rather than create it-not the view that's taken by many provincial transportation agencies. That said, American cities are generally starting from a higher level of highway provision than Canadian cities.

I remain annoyed by the tendency (everywhere in the literature) to discount highways' effect on decentralisation. Yes, they are not a sufficient condition for decentralising-but they are still a necessary condition! If you don't build the highway, the ability to decentralise is extremely limited.

Keywords: land use transport link, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: land use transport link, urban form, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, urban design

Keywords: geography, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, geography

Some interesting discussions on infill development. I found his description of centre-city abandonment interesting: “premature write-down of the existing built environment.” That particular economic spin on downtown decay summarizes my intuitive dislike for rundown centre city buildings. Consider a Victorian or Edwardian storefront in downtown Toronto: these are considered too expensive to build today in new neighbourhoods, and yet we let the existing stock of (valuable!) buildings decay in many parts of the city.

Bourne discusses an interesting model from Klaassen and van den Burg (over many papers). They characterize urban evolution in four stages: 1) urbanization; 2) outmigration; 3) disurbanization; and 4) reurbanization. It's an interesting breakdown for recent urban history, particularly in Canadian cities that are generally in phase four now.

Bourne also discusses the poor information/data available on single-lot infill sites in cities, and some strange strategies to combat urban decay, like Detroit's empowerment/enterprise zone in its centre.

Keywords: geography, urban form, urban planning

Keywords: land use transport link, transport planning, transit, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban form, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban form, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, canada

The article argues that the role of urban form has been over-emphasized in the debate about changing travel habits. Personal preferences may need to be changed instead. There are some interesting quotes regarding access and housing preferences in the 1960s and 1970s, quite useful for understanding how little has changed.

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: canada, urban planning

Keywords: canada, urban planning, geography, transport planning, history, urban economics

This paper demonstrates that over the 25-year period, 1971-96, the majority of Canadian cities have undergone transition towards an increasingly decentralised urban form. The trends, however, are quite diverse, pointing to fundamental differences in the respective importance of growth in central and outer parts of the metropolitan area. On the whole, the relatively high densities observed in Canadian central cities, in comparison with US ones, appear to reflect residual centralisation rather than continued growth in metropolitan regions' innermost parts. Only Vancouver, and to a lesser extent Toronto and Victoria, exhibit indisputable evidence of post-1971 central-area growth. The predominant trend has been towards suburban-style, low-density expansion, albeit with considerable intercity variation regarding changes in central-area and suburban density. Findings presented here point to previously unidentified trends towards recentralisation in a few CMAs and, in about half of the surveyed metropolitan areas, densification of suburban tracts.

Keywords: canada, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: land use transport link, urban form, urban planning

Keywords: land use transport link, urban form, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, new urbanism, transit-oriented development

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, streets, street design, new urbanism

There is a critical need for a new paradigm of growth on undeveloped sites - one that complements urban infill and revitalization. The alternative transportation network proposed here calls for a new hierarchy of arterials and boulevards that allow for through traffic without always by-passing commercial centers - a road network that reinforces access to walkable neighborhoods and urban town centers without cutting them off from local pedestrian movement. A plan for new growth areas around Chicago proposes 3 types of major roads to replace the standard arterial grid: transit boulevards, throughways, and arterials. The transit boulevards combine the capacity of a major arterial with the intimacy of local frontage roads and the pedestrian orientation that comes with the transit system. Local arterials are multi-lane facilities that transition into a couplet of main streets at the village centers.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, streets, street design, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning, new urbanism

An interesting dissection of the tensions within sustainability. Campbell discusses the types of conflicts that arise between economic, social and environmental interests, and generally argues that the Achilles heel of suistainability remains its fuzzy vagueness. I liked his analogy of the planner as translator, and the need to make full translations of other camps' arguments into the language of each discipline, to ensure that no one camp dominates the other.

Keywords: sustainability, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transit, transport planning, rail, land use transport link

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, canada, transit

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, urban design

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban form, urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link

Keywords: transit, urban form, land use transport link, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, transit

Keywords: urban planning, transit-oriented development

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transit, urban planning, land use transport link, transport planning

Keywords: transit, urban planning, rail, urban form

This paper is the best I've read on the jobs-housing issue, with a careful distinction between balance and containment, an examination of balance-with-mismatch, and a more careful analysis of the impacts on VMT and mode split.

One finding that interested me: balance was not correlated with a substantial change in VMT, but containment was (and was also correlated with higher levels of walking). Another interesting conclusion: imbalance is a planning failure, not a market failure, since it usually happens in jobs-surplus areas where residents apply political pressure (read: NIMBYism) to fight any market-driven changes to the residential stock.

I liked the description of jobs-housing balance as the potential for self-containment. I see the actual level of self-containment to be a function of two variables: jobs-housing balance, and travel times. Jobs-housing balance allows a city to easily respond to congestion or degraded travel times, by giving workers the option of moving closer to their jobs.

Keywords: urban planning, land use transport link, urban form

Past research suggests that mixed land-uses encourage non-auto commuting; however, the evidence remains sketchy. This paper explores this question by investigating how the presence of retail activities in neighborhoods influences the commuting choices of residents using data from the 1985 American Housing Survey. Having grocery stores and other consumer services within 300 feet of one's residence is found to encourage commuting by mass transit, walking and bicycling, controlling for such factors as residential densities and vehicle ownership levels. When retail shops are beyond 300 feet yet within 1 mile of residences, however, they tend to encourage auto-commuting, ostensibly because of the ability to efficiently link work and shop trips by car. The presence of nearby commercial land-uses is also associated with relatively low vehicle ownership rates and short commuting distances among residents of a mixed-use neighborhood. Overall, residential densities exerted a stronger influence on commuting mode choices than levels of land-use mixture, except for walking and bicycle commutes. For non-motorized commuting, the presence or absence of neighborhood shops is a better predictor of mode choice than residential densities.

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link, urban form

Keywords: urban form, transport planning, urban planning, urban design

detailed annotation

Keywords: transit, urban planning, transport planning, canada, land use transport link, urban form, transit-oriented development

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, transit, land use transport link

The built environment is thought to influence travel demand along three principal dimensions - density, diversity, and design. This paper tests this proposition by examining how the “3Ds” affect trip rates and mode choice of residents in the San Francisco Bay Area. Using 1990 travel diary data and land-use records obtained from the U.S. census, regional inventories, and field surveys, models are estimated that relate features of the built environment to variations in vehicle miles traveled per household and mode choice, mainly for non-work trips. Factor analysis is used to linearly combine variables in the density and design dimensions of the built environment. The research finds that density, land-use diversity, and pedestrian-oriented designs generally reduce trip rates and encourage non-auto travel in statistically significant ways, though their influences appear to be fairly marginal. Elasticities between variables and factors that capture the 3Ds and various measures of travel demand are generally in the .06 to .18 range, expressed in absolute terms. Compact development was found to exert the strongest influence on personal business trips. Within-neighborhood retail shops, on the other hand, was most strongly associated with mode choice for work trips. And while a factor capturing “walking quality” was only moderately related to mode choice for non-work trips, those living in neighborhoods with grid-iron street designs and restricted commercial parking were nonetheless found to average significantly less vehicle miles of travel and rely less on single-occupant vehicles for non-work trips. Overall, this research shows that the elasticities between each dimension of the built environment and travel demand are modest to moderate, though certainly not inconsequential. Thus is supports the contention of new urbanists and others that creating more compact, diverse, and pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods, in combination, can meaningfully influence how Americans travel.

A solid study, and a useful decomposition of urban form. By the time I got around to reading it, I'd seen several similar papers (like Cervero and Duncan's later followup), so the conclusion was not surprising.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form, land use transport link

A good, balanced paper.

A few comments on the models: the first model does not account for spatial autocorrelation, which may be an issue. The finding that station location within a highway median, incentive zoning, and restrictive zoning were not statistically correlated with building activity around stations is quite interesting.

Keywords: transit, urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: pedestrian planning, urban planning, urban form, urban design, land use transport link

Apparently fairly important - shows benefits of traditional neighbourhood design.

Keywords: pedestrian planning, urban planning, urban form, urban design, land use transport link

Keywords: transit, land use transport link, transport planning, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban form, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban form, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: urban planning, canada

A comparison of trends 1980-1990 in Southern California and the Netherlands. The authors seemed determined to push a particular thesis about increasing automobility and rising polycentricity, but the data from the Netherlands didn't really bear out their thesis: trips were generally getting quicker and both cycling and transit mode share were rising, despite growing auto ownership. They did make an interesting distinction between different forms of polycentric development: an “archipelago” with nodes in an urban sea (Los Angeles) versus “spheres of interest” where primary nodes have secondary nodes in their sphere (or orbit), and essentially partition the region (Netherlands).

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: urban planning, geography, canada

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, land use transport link, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: land use transport link, urban form, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, pedestrian planning, bicycle planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: land use transport link, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban form

detailed annotation

Keywords: general interest, history, sociology, urban planning, urban politics

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: transport modelling, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: land use transport link, transit, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, governance

Keywords: bicycle planning, pedestrian planning, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link, transit

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: transit, urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: climate mitigation, land use transport link, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: transit, land use transport link, urban form, transport planning, urban planning

In the first three chapters (the only part I've read), there were some very interesting discussion of growth management policies, equity and racial segregation in the USA.

One point I found interesting was the discussion of preferences. In general, Americans want single-family detached houses, auto-based travel, free parking and short travel times. The planning system in many ways guarantees the first two: suburbs have extremely high minimum standards for housing (low density single-family homes), and generally provide generous roads and free parking. The last aspect of preferences cannot be guaranteed due to growth and swamping of existing roads by new travel, discussed at length in the book. This is the aspect I find interesting: the system is inherently biased towards one set of preferences (housing) and limits trading off housing against travel time-if an individual prefers short travel times and is willing to accept “lower quality” dense housing in return, that option is rarely available. In other words, this minimum provision limits choices, a point that Andre Sorensen has made repeatedly in his discussions in the course I'm taking.

Downs notes that one-third of US households did not live in single-family homes in 1990, and one-third were renters (presumably with substantial overlap). He describes the provision of low-cost housing as a “trickle-down” process: since cheap new housing is prohibited, only degraded older houses are available for those who cannot afford the suburban single-family home. This process breaks down when “net housing construciton is lower than net household formation”-i.e., periods of rapid growth.

Keywords: urban planning, equity, zoning, urban politics, smart growth

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, smart growth

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: new urbanism, urban planning, urban design

Keywords: new urbanism, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, architecture, new urbanism, urban design

Keywords: general interest, urban planning, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, new urbanism

Keywords: urban form, urban planning, history

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Interesting, with some good statistics. The author shows that if transportation and housing costs are combined, total spending amounts to 47-57% of income across almost all of the United States. The split between transport and housing varies dramatically, of course, but the point is that you aren't really saving people any money by building an auto-dependent region; you're just choosing a different urban form. Top 10 most expensive: San Diego, Tampa, Los Angeles, Miami, Denver, Atlanta, Phoenix, Cleveland and San Francisco. Bottom 11: Portland, Baltimore, Houston, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Anchorage, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis/St. Paul, St. Louis and Honolulu. New York, surprisingly, is right in the middle of the pack.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form

Comparison of Portland, Seattle and Vancouver

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, canada

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, streets

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, streets

After a quick read, my main criticism regards their choice of neighbourhood variables. I am not convinced that they are capturing “walkability” in their coarse residential sprawl index or “mixed-use” index. While these two variables are intended to capture density and diversity (ignoring design), they ignore the work environment and probably do a poor job of measuring the residential environment. They also tried using the Smart Growth America sprawl index, but this index is not local enough to capture the necessary neighbourhood-scale effects.

Additionally, I have to wonder about their sample-how many walkable environments were actually sampled? In the US, an unstratified sampling strategy would not include many walkable locations.

Finally, I have to wonder about time lags: their model only captures a change in BMI in the year following a move (when a change in sprawl/mixed use is observed). What about subsequent years?

That said, these weaknesses are present in many other papers in the literature, and they do bring some interesting perspectives and methodology to the table. The inclusion of occupation variables associated with strength and strenuousness was a valuable addition to modelling in this area. I'd need to read the paper more closely before I'd be prepared to defend my complaints, really.

Keywords: urban planning, active transportation, land use transport link

An excellent summary and rebuttal of the critiques of New Urbanism, with a very solid bibliography thrown in for good measure.

Good quotes: “Neoclassical economics is presented as a neutral methodology, when it actually prescribes a political theory favouring individual self-interest and consumerism over public-spirited behaviour and deliberative political choices.”

“[...] New Urbanism will not abolish traffic congestion. But all congestion is not equal. San Francisco and Paris have congestion, but the streets are alive, the quality of life is high, and alternatives to driving are plentiful. As many New Urbanists have pointed out, the worst-case scenario is really congestion in the suburbs, where the landscape is openly hostile to pedestrians and transit service is minimal.”

“Andrés Duany has trenchantly argued that it makes no sense to throw away all of our town-planning traditions in the vain hope that a few architectural masterpieces will result. This has produced `an appalling win-loss ratio', with hundreds of disasters littering the landscape for every masterpiece produced.”

Keywords: urban planning, new urbanism

Keywords: equity, gender, urban planning

Demonstrated that NewKen89's approach was sound.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, bicycle planning

A good counterpoint to Gordon & Richardson's article. My one regret with this article: because the author tries to stick to a clearly defensible urban form, and because he tries to avoid seeming “hopelessly European or Canadian,” his definition of a “compact” urban form is actually quite low-density and sprawling by any other nation's standards. He advocates a density of about 4 units per acre, which is below the level required to support even one bus every half hour.

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: land use transport link, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, traffic calming

Keywords: transport planning, transit, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Planning faces the predicament that as recommendations become bolder possibilities for implementation deteriorate. This is imputed to society's transition from a Fordist and modern to a post-Fordist and postmodern era. On the one hand, postmodern values account for more public participation and heightened environmental sensitivity, which translate into proposals for alternative forms of urban development. On the other hand, the implementation of these proposals is impaired by reduced public sector resources as a result of the economic instability associated with post-Fordism. Another impediment is the difficulty to achieve sufficient support for planning objectives in the postmodern context. This context is marked by a fragmentation of values, attachment to the existing built environment, and suspicion between social groups. The empirical focus is on Toronto's bold metropolitan planning proposals. Most recent planning documents call for reurbanization efforts, a compact urban form, and reduced reliance on the car. In this paper I cast doubts, however, on the eventual actualization of these proposals by highlighting weaknesses in the present and anticipated implementation context. These are tied to factors that are specific to Toronto, but also to a greater extent to the post-Fordist and postmodern environment.

A few interesting ideas. He argues that the postmodern attachment of value to public participation and plural views could undermine processes aimed at changing suburban form to better accommodate plurality. He suggests that NIMBYism arises from suspicion between factions in a fractured society, and this will in turn hinder changes to existing urban form (infill, etc.) and favour greenfield development where such arguments can be avoided. In the light of his arguments, I find policies such as urban growth boundaries more appealing: they prevent greenfield alternatives and force NIMBYism to be confronted directly. Toronto already seems to be headed in this direction, as social housing projects are increasingly recognised as necessary and located in all wards, instead of being fought off by all wards.

Keywords: geography, urban planning, politics, canada, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, canada

An excellent, detached and comprehensive overview of postwar trends in the Toronto region. The hypothesis that Toronto may have “the best of both worlds” by having both dispersed and concentrated environments is an interesting one, although the retention of that status would require both realms to grow at similar rates, which has not been the trend in recent decades.

Keywords: canada, urban planning, geography, urban politics, toronto

Some very good points in a comparison of several Toronto shopping centres that I know well. Hard data makes for an interesting comparison exercise. The amazing thing, really, is the allocation of space in each centre: roughly 2.5:1 ratio of space for cars to space for buildings (except North York Centre, at 2:1), compared with 1:2 in downtown Toronto. North York Centre still comes out almost as bad as the others, since it uses its saved space mostly for open park space (38% of total space!)

“If suburban mixed-use centres have been successful in juxtaposing different land uses, their integration of these uses has been far less impressive.”

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban design, pedestrian planning

The smart growth concept has recently achieved prominence within the planning profession. It represents a reaction to mounting resentment towards the adverse consequences of prevailing forms of urbanization: air pollution, high development costs and deteriorating quality of life. The article examines the possibility of implementing smart growth proposals within the prevailing political, economic and value environment. After drawing lessons from the lack of success of attempts at altering urban development over the last thirty years, the article proposes two smart growth strategies. To maintain their implementation potential and capacity to modify urbanization trends, the strategies avoid clashes with entrenched preference patterns and powerful interest groups. The first strategy consists in an expansion of the high-density transit-oriented compact urban realm into the ambient low-density car-dependent dispersed realm. The second strategy involves the creation of mixed-use high-density corridors, hospitable to transit use and walking, within newly urbanized areas.

An excellent article, aimed at realistic incremental policies to change urban densities, the main obstacle to mode share changes. The solutions he presents are not new at all, but the political context and discussion of suburban values are worth thinking about.

Keywords: urban planning, urban politics, canada, urban form, smart growth

Keywords: urban politics, canada, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: urban planning, canada

The paper compares density patterns of the three largest Canadian metropolitan regions with those of a sample of 12 U.S. urban areas with comparable populations. It verifies if such patterns support claims of Canadian urban distinctiveness prevalent within this country's research literature. Findings indicate that regional differences among U.S. cities are as important as cross-national distinctions. Measures of centrality and overall density place observed Canadian metrpolitan areas within the same category as older U.S. East Coast metropolitan areas. Inter-city comparisons of historically and geographically defined zones suggest a period of cross-national convergence before World War II, when the inner city was developed, followed by a period of divergence from the 1940s to the 1970s, when the inner suburb was built. The development of the outer suburb, which began in the early 1970s, marks a return to cross-national convergence. These results question the continued relevance of the literature on the distinctiveness of Canadian urbanization.

Very interesting. They find that Canadian cities, as a group, do stand out from American cities-they are denser overall (than American cities of comparable size), and denser in their cores and inner suburbs. In the outer suburbs, however, densities are indistinguishable from American cities. Beyond that, however, Canadian cities have much smaller exurban regions than their American counterparts. They fit a cubic polynomial to the density/distance-from-CBD graph, and don't find Canadian cities to be as distinctive in that measure; I'm not sure how solid their analysis there is, though (haven't read it closely enough). Generally, the Canadian cities are distinctive as a group, since all of the major Canadian cities are dense, but are generally similar to northeastern American cities. The U.S. just has a wider variety of cities. “Our work does not so much refute the perspective espoused by the Canadian urban specificity literature as situate it historically and geographically. According to zonal findings and events that have marked the evolution of cities in the two countries, most of the noted cross-national differences can be linked to the period that ran from the end of World War II to the 1970s.” Overall, I don't think their results justify the final sentence of their abstract (repeated in their introduction); I think Canadian cities are quite distinctive. In particular, they don't discuss exurban trends very much, although these are a very significant part of American city development today: the Canadian cities have only 18 percent of their population in exurban areas, while the American cities are clustered closer to 30 percent, with some as high as 50 percent (Atlanta, Boston).

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, canada

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: geography, history, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning, pedestrian planning

Increases in per capita vehicle usage and associated emissions have spawned an increased the examination of the ways in which our communities and regions are developing. Associated with increased vehicle usage are decreased levels of walking and biking, two valid forms of physical activity. The Surgeon General's 1996 report, Physical Activity and Health, highlights the increasing level of physical inactivity as a growing cause of mortality. The costs and benefits of contrasting land development and transportation investment practices have been the subject of considerable debate in the literature. Findings have been refuted based on methodological grounds and inaccurate interpretation of data. Several of these studies, their methodological approaches, and their critiques are analyzed. While most agree that the built environment influences travel, considerable disagreement exists over the likely impacts of increased density, mix, and street connectivity on air quality, transportation system performance, and household activity patterns.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, active transportation, land use transport link

Keywords: energy, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Obesity is a major health problem in the United States and around the world. To date, relationships between obesity and aspects of the built environment have not been evaluated empirically at the individual level. Objective

To evaluate the relationship between the built environment around each participant's place of residence and self-reported travel patterns (walking and time in a car), body mass index (BMI), and obesity for specific gender and ethnicity classifications.

Body Mass Index, minutes spent in a car, kilometers walked, age, income, educational attainment, and gender were derived through a travel survey of 10,878 participants in the Atlanta, Georgia region. Objective measures of land use mix, net residential density, and street connectivity were developed within a 1-kilometer network distance of each participant's place of residence. A cross-sectional design was used to associate urban form measures with obesity, BMI, and transportation-related activity when adjusting for sociodemographic covariates. Discrete analyses were conducted across gender and ethnicity. The data were collected between 2000 and 2002 and analysis was conducted in 2004.

Land-use mix had the strongest association with obesity (BMI>=30 kg/m^2), with each quartile increase being associated with a 12.2% reduction in the likelihood of obesity across gender and ethnicity. Each additional hour spent in a car per day was associated with a 6% increase in the likelihood of obesity. Conversely, each additional kilometer walked per day was associated with a 4.8% reduction in the likelihood of obesity. As a continuous measure, BMI was significantly associated with urban form for white cohorts. Relationships among urban form, walk distance, and time in a car were stronger among white than black cohorts.

Measures of the built environment and travel patterns are important predictors of obesity across gender and ethnicity, yet relationships among the built environment, travel patterns, and weight may vary across gender and ethnicity. Strategies to increase land-use mix and distance walked while reducing time in a car can be effective as health interventions.

A very useful addition to the debates on urban form. I'm a fan of anything bring active transportation into the debate, rather than just trying to reduce SOV trips. I'm curious about why they found land-use mix and walking distance to be statistically independent influences on obesity. Their speculation that it may be related to nutrition (and so-called “food deserts”) is an interesting idea.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, active transportation, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, active transportation, urban form, land use transport link, urban planning

An increasing body of evidence suggests that moderate forms of physical activity (such as walking and bicycling), when engaged in regularly, can have important beneficial effects on public health. This article reviews current public health, planning, and urban design research to determine, first, how walking and bicycling might be critically important exercise behaviors for improving public health, second, how urban form affects the frequency of walking and bicycling as a form of physical activity, and third, how the public health considerations outlined in this article might reorient planners' thinking toward the realization of health-promotive environments. The current lack of emphasis on the interdependencies between built form and overall quality of life, as measured by health, safety, and welfare considerations, suggests the need for a rethinking of public policy approaches to transportation investment and land development.

Keywords: active transportation, urban planning, transport planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: active transportation, urban planning, transport planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: active transportation, urban planning, pedestrian planning, bicycle planning, urban form, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, active transportation, land use transport link, urban form

Findings from an empirical analysis to test the impacts of land-use mix, population density, and employment density on the use of the single-occupant vehicle (SOV), transit and walking for both work trips and shopping trips are presented. The hypothetical relationships tested focused on whether there is a relationship between urban form and modal choice, whether this relationship exists when controlling for non-urban form factors, whether this relationship is linear or nonlinear, and whether a stronger relationship exists between modal choice and urban form when they are measured at both trip ends as opposed to either the origin or the destination. A review of the literature and experiences suggested that a fair amount of information is known about the impacts of density on mode choice. However, considerable debate exists over whether density itself is actually the causal stimulus or a surrogate for other factors. To address this issue a data base was developed with a comprehensive set of variables for which density may be a proxy, for example, demographics and level of service. This analysis employed a correlational research design in which mode choice was compared among census tracts with differing levels of density and mix. Findings from this research indicate that density and mix are both related to mode choice, even when controlling for non-urban form factors for both work trips and shopping trips. Furthermore, the relationship between population and employment density and mode choice for SOV, transit and walking is nonlinear for both work and shopping trips. Transit usage and walking increase as density and land-use mix increase, whereas SOV usage declines. The findings from this research suggest that measuring urban form at both trip ends provides a greater ability to predict travel choices than looking at trip ends separately. The findings also suggest that increasing the level of land-use mix at the trip origins and destinations is also related to a reduction in SOV travel and an increase in transit and walking.

Solid research, with more convincing methodology than Sch96 (which I read at about the same time).

Overall, the most interesting result of the paper is the demonstration of nonlinearity. Figures 2 and 3 of their paper show a graph of modal share vs. employment density, and vs. population density. These graphs show that major increases in bus/walk modes only happen at employment densities greater than 125 employees/acre (work trips), or 13 residents/acre (shopping trips). The implications for policy are obvious: if you aren't going to reach those thresholds, you're wasting your time. Also, the employment graph shows substantial nonlinearity: between 75 and 125 employees/acre, there is essentially no change in mode share.

They also had some predictable results: walking trips were the most sensitive to increases in population density; it's worth considering densities at both trip ends (i.e., both residential population density and employment population density); etc.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form, transit, active transportation, land use transport link

A leading cause of air pollution in many urban regions is mobile source emissions that are largely attributable to household vehicle travel. While household travel patterns have been previously related with land use in the literature (Crane, R., 1996. Journal of the American Planning Association 62 (1, Winter); Cervero, R. and Kockelman, C., 1997. Transportation Research Part D 2 (3), 199-219), little work has been conducted that effectively extends this relationship to vehicle emissions. This paper describes a methodology for quantifying relationships between land use, travel choices, and vehicle emissions within the Seattle, Washington region. Our analysis incorporates land use measures of density and mix which affect the proximity of trip origins to destinations; a measure of connectivity which impacts the directness and completeness of pedestrian and motorized linkages; vehicle trip generation by operating mode; vehicle miles/h of travel and speed; and estimated household vehicle emissions of nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and carbon monoxide. The data used for this project consists of the Puget Sound Transportation Panel Travel Survey, the 1990 US Census, employment density data from the Washington State Employment Security Office, and information on Seattle's vehicle fleet mix and climatological attributes provided by the Washington State Department of Ecology. Analyses are based on a cross-sectional research design in which comparisons are made of variations in household travel demand and emissions across alternative urban form typologies. Base emission rates from MOBILE5a and separate engine start rates are used to calculate total vehicle emissions in grams accounting for fleet characteristics and other inputs reflecting adopted transportation control measures. Emissions per trip are based on the network distance of each trip, average travel speed, and a multi-stage engine operating mode (cold start, hot start, and stabilized) function.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: sociology, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: history, urban planning

Keywords: active transportation, urban planning, pedestrian planning, bicycle planning, urban form, transport planning

Keywords: location choice, urban planning, canada, geography

Keywords: urban planning, urban form

Keywords: transit, urban planning, land use transport link

Keywords: sociology, urban planning

Keywords: sociology, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban politics

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, pedestrian planning

Keywords: urban planning, pedestrian planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban design, pedestrian planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Seems reasonable, with a more balanced coverage of the debate than others (GorRic97, even Ewi97).

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link

A good discussion of this issue, although it's admittedly not a topic I find particularly important.

One possible reason why suburb-to-suburb commutes may wind up being relatively short: “the relative homogeneity of suburban areas (making it easy to locate near one's job, or conversely negating any advantage of living far from one's job).”

In general, I agree with most of the author's conclusions. I don't see jobs-housing balance as a central issue in transportation planning. I would aim more for diversity: providing a mixture of types of jobs and types of housing in every community. Aiming for an exact or near-exact balance is futile, as the author argues, but I believe that there is nonetheless a need to give people the option of locating near their jobs, which may not be provided automatically by the market. (See, for example, the absence of family-oriented condominiums in downtown Toronto, despite clear evidence of a demand after they were built in downtown Vancouver.)

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form, land use transport link

A very good article, covering the theory, the empirical tests, and the methodology involved in measuring land use impacts. Overall, I agree with most of the analysis, with the exception of the closing tirade against planners who support transit and oppose highway expansion.

I found the discussion of the 1980 beltway study (PayBla80) quite interesting-54 U.S. cities, with and without beltway highways, to see what the impacts were on central cities. It's a good question about regional structure and urban form.

There is one key difference between the highway studies and the transit studies cited: since the studies are American, the highways are in areas with no competing modes. As a result, presence/absence of a highway is an indication of the presence/absence of access, really, since the transit service is almost universally poorer than the road access. The transit facilities, by contrast, each represent fairly incremental improvements to access to areas that are already well-served by highways; furthermore, they are competing with highways, while the highway projects listed aren't really competing with transit. Finally, many of the transit facilities studied sound like examples of poor planning overall.

Boarnet & Chalermpong's 2001 study of toll roads in Orange County shows an example of a simple highway project providing access to an otherwise inaccessible region. If there was a comparable example of rail providing access to an empty hinterland (like streetcars at the turn of the century), it might make a fair comparison. For this reason, I'd like to look closer at Haider & Miller's study in Toronto. It's a context where both modes are quite viable: rail and highways both attract significant customers. Absence of highways does not mean absence of access, since transit can fill that void; and vice versa.

That said, the conclusions the author draws about highway impacts and transit impacts are somewhat fair. I would perhaps expand the field of impact of rail beyond the narrow corridor she ascribes to it-with feeder bus systems, a rail line can have impacts well beyond its immediate corridor.

The one argument I would like to pursue further is the author's claim that transit systems should have a decentralising effect similar to highways, since they provide access and allow people to access the centre quickly from a distance. From a theoretical perspective considering a single rail line, I agree with this; however, it ignores two important points: the focussing effect of transit, and the accessibility peaks at intersecting facilities. Mutually supportive transit+land use involves a concentration of activities along the transit corridor, focusing origins/destinations within a linear region. Highways do also have some focusing effects-hence the higher land values near interchanges. However, since the transit feeder mode is usually foot rather than car, a transit facility will tend to have a stronger focusing effect. This is not a direct argument against decentralisation, but it is a partial argument: the transit facility may allow radial decentralisation, but it will simultaneously encourage circumferential centralisation.

Finally, when multiple transportation facilities intersect, there is a peaking of accessibility, providing a single focal point. This can be seen at the intersection of freeways, or the intersection of transit lines. It is here that transit can encourage radial centralisation: if multiple transit facilities intersect at the city centre, the accessibility peak created at that location could potentially counter the decentralising effects of the individual transit lines. Transit probably has more potential for centralising than highways do, since more than two transit facilities can intersect in close geographic proximity-or, as in many North American city centres, multiple transit facilities and a highway could converge on the downtown.

Keywords: transport planning, land use transport link, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

A recent article by Prakash et al. (Applied Economics, 33, 1579-85, 2001) asserted that induced travel effects do not occur. This paper is criticized on several grounds. It disregards much of the recent work in this area that has empirically estimated induced travel relationships. The models specified are inappropriate for properly addressing this question, both in their use of road expenditure data (based on a misunderstanding of how this may relate to traffic growth) and specification of a model that does not account for other variables that generally have a large effect on traffic growth (notably population and income growth). The evidence in the literature is summarized and an analysis of UK road expenditure data shows that expenditure is not a good measure of actual road capacity that is built.

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Very interesting. Markham looks like it may be a good control case for future investigations. Having lived away from the GTA for many years, I was surprised to hear of consistent support for such policies from Markham, which was quite car-dependent in my time.

Keywords: urban design, urban form, transport planning, urban planning, new urbanism

A reasonable paper, but I'm skeptical of the data. The authors used highly aggregated metropolitan-level data to draw inferences about travel behaviour, which seems a bit dubious. They did at least include a variable summarizing how “monocentric” each area was, but did not otherwise disaggregate the data at all. I'm not convinced that behaviour can be analysed meaningfully at that scale.

Keywords: urban form, urban planning, transport planning, transport modelling, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, transport planning, energy, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, urban form

While initially convincing, this article relies on some very dubious rhetorical methods to attack compact urban form. It's worthwhile if only to help develop the critical skills to dissect invalid argumentation. Be sure to read Ewing (1997) as well.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, canada, pedestrian planning, bicycle planning

Keywords: canada, urban planning, urban form, zoning

Keywords: urban planning, ecology

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, transport planning, canada

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: urban planning, transit

I haven't fully absorbed the meaning of this author's models yet.

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, land use transport link, transport planning, pedestrian planning

Keywords: spatial modelling, ilute, canada, urban planning

Keywords: spatial modelling, ilute, urban planning, land use transport link

Proximity to transportation infrastructure (highways and public transit) influences residential real estate values. Housing values also are influenced by propinquity to a shopping facility or a recreational amenity. Spatial autoregressive (SAR) models were used to estimate the impact of locational elements on the price of residential properties sold during 1995 in the Greater Toronto Area. A large data set consisting of 27,400 freehold sales was used in the study. Moran's I was estimated to determine the effects of spatial autocorrelation that existed in housing values. SAR models, using a combination of locational influences, neighborhood characteristics, and structural attributes, explained 83% variance in housing values. Using the “comparable sales approach,” a spatiotemporal lag variable was estimated for every property in the database. This research discovered that SAR models offered a better fit than nonspatial models. This study also discovered that in the presence of other explanatory variables, locational and transportation factors were not strong determinants of housing values. On the other hand, the number of washrooms and the average household income in a neighborhood were found to be significant determinants of housing values. Stepwise regression techniques were used to determine reduced spatial hedonic models.

Keywords: ilute, canada, urban planning, land use transport link

In the chapter I read (#9), there was some mildly interesting background, although mostly material I'd seen before elsewhere. There's some discussion of Harland Bartholomew, the planner who laid out Vancouver's street grid, although he's claimed to belong to the same camp as Robert Moses. The most interesting part of the chapter was the way he highlighted the impossibility of effective land planning in the American regulatory system, how that came about, and how it differs from Europe.

Keywords: history, urban planning, land use transport link

I found this article interesting, and it spanned a wide range of the debates on “desirable density.” I liked the effort to discuss net vs. gross density, comparisons of many different measures, the relation to declining household size (and hence lower person densities), and the relation to transit service. However, I found some of the arguments unpersuasive, particularly the argument in favour of a density of 30-40 units/net hectare-but perhaps I need to read the source study. I quite liked the historical aside of “London vs. the continent” (Rasmussen 1937) and even the bleeding edge of American debate (Jacobs and Appleyard 1987).

Useful refs on density: DETR 1998 report (BSPUCLLD98), Rudlin and Falk (1999); also, Susan Owens (1984).

Keywords: urban form, urban planning

Keywords: history, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: zoning, equity, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban form, urban planning, pedestrian planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban form, land use transport link, urban planning, active transportation

Keywords: urban politics, urban planning

Keywords: equity, gender, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, smart growth, canada

detailed annotation

Keywords: urban planning, history, urban form, canada

Keywords: pedestrian planning, urban planning, traffic calming

Keywords: pedestrian planning, urban planning

Keywords: pedestrian planning, urban planning, transport planning, traffic calming

Keywords: pedestrian planning, urban planning, transport planning, traffic calming

Keywords: urban planning, urban design, transport planning, street design, streets

Keywords: transit, transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link, canada

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban form, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, ecology

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form

A brief survey of literature on Toronto, San Francisco, Washington, Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta, Calgary, Edmonton, Portland and San Diego. Many, many good references.

Keywords: urban planning, transit, transport planning, land use transport link, urban form, canada

Keywords: land use transport link, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: location choice, firm behaviour, urban planning, urban economics

Keywords: urban planning, urban economics, canada

Keywords: canada, toronto, transit, urban planning, urban form, transport planning

Keywords: sociology, equity, urban economics, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: urban planning, streets, urban design, street design

Keywords: urban planning, streets, urban design, street design

detailed annotation

Keywords: urban planning, equity, transport planning, general interest, sociology, streets, pedestrian planning, accessibility, urban design

Keywords: sociology, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban design, urban form, parking

Keywords: urban planning, sociology, equity

Keywords: bicycle planning, pedestrian planning, urban planning, bike box, street design, streets

Interesting, but frustrating from a travel perspective. The analysis focuses mainly on retail format (large scale) rather than transportation bias-i.e., auto-dependent stores. So, flagship stores in the Eaton Centre are treated similarly to outer-suburban big boxes, although they induce quite different travel behaviour. Additionally, hard data on the impacts to small independent retail is not presented.

Nonetheless, the description of the strategy and rationale for large format stores is interesting, given their importance to travel demand.

Keywords: urban planning, toronto

Keywords: history, urban planning, urban form

This study presents evidence that households, located in areas of the Atlanta Region with moderately high levels of street connectivity and compactness, drive and pollute less on a daily basis. This analysis employs a rigorous methodology to assess the emissions per household on a per trip basis accounting for cold start cycles, speed, hot stabilized operation, distance, and regional fleet characteristics. Emissions per household are cross-sectionally correlated with the land use patterns at the place of residence. These findings support the argument that a “nexus” exists between land use policies implemented through local government development regulations and household travel behavior (ie mode choice, travel distance, travel time, and vehicle emissions). This research provides an initial and very critical step that is required to lend credibility to the argument that major metropolitan regions should consider alternatives to current land and travel intensive development patterns to meet future air quality objectives.

Keywords: transport planning, urban form, urban planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, urban growth boundary

Keywords: urban planning, sociology, urban form

Keywords: sociology, equity, urban economics, urban planning, urban form

Some interesting criticisms of New (Sub)urbanism as a rebranding of older modes of subdivision building, in the context of Vaughan. I didn't read the article very closely, and I'm not sure what the overall thrust is. My sense is that it builds on a quote from Lef91 to explore the urbanisation of the rural and the ruralisation of the urban.

Keywords: geography, canada, urban planning, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, new urbanism

Keywords: land use transport link, transport planning, urban planning

The unsustainable nature of current urban transportation and land use is well recognized. What is less clear is the prescription for how to move towards a more sustainable future, especially given the many interest groups involved, the complexity of urban systems and the fragmented nature of decision-making in most urban regions. It is argued that the process of achieving more sustainable transportation requires suitable establishment of four pillars: effective governance of land use and transportation; fair, efficient, stable funding; strategic infrastructure investments; and attention to neighbourhood design. A review of each pillar identifies key issues. The characteristics of an ideal body for governance of land use and transportation are considered. Trade-offs are identified with: spatial representation; organizational structure; democracy; and market philosophy. Effective financing and pricing of urban transportation may be distorted because responsibility for infrastructure is separated from service provision. Financing mechanisms are categorized depending on vehicle use and location. Investment in infrastructure for alternative fuel vehicles and intermediate semi-rapid transit may be required in many cities. Major investment in public transit infrastructure will likely not suffice if macro land use and micro neighbourhood designs are not supportive of these investments.

A useful read, covering a wide swath of topics, and including many useful pointers to other papers within each topic. I found the discussion of financing transportation particularly useful, mostly because I haven't read much about that topic. Discussion of market vs. non-market approaches, including P3s, was also valuable. I'm glad to see discussion of neighbourhood design in the article, a topic which is familiar and close to my heart.

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, governance, finance, transit, pedestrian planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, canada, urban form, land use transport link, transit

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: bicycle planning, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form, land use transport link

An excellent summary of the dataset collected in their 1999 book, with useful analysis. It's presented in a much more neutral, distanced light than some of their earlier work. The methodology still undoubtedly has problems, such as the use of Metro Toronto instead of the Greater Toronto Area for the city definition. That introduces some massive bias into all references to Toronto, since it excludes all of the sprawling suburbs, including Mississauga (which now has a population over 600,000 and was already quite large in 1990).

While it might not suit their agenda, I would like to see housing costs included in the analysis. There is a clear relationship between density and greater competition for limited land and housing, and any analysis of regional economic competitiveness really has to take housing costs into account. Newman and Kenworthy's core argument that land use influences transport has a clear converse, but they seem to have chosen to ignore it here.

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link, urban form

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form, transit, land use transport link, energy

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form, transit

This sourcebook provides the most comprehensive set of time series data and analyses on these important subjects that is available today. It spans 46 cities in the US, Australia, Canada, Europe and Asia, covering the widest possible range of data on the land use and transportation systems, energy use, and economic and environmental impacts of transportation that has been assembled to date. It also contains a set of coloured maps for each city outlining territorial boundaries, the extent of urbanisation, and all rail, busway and freeway systems. A must for every individual and organisation wanting to better understand and respond to the urban transportation debate.

Keywords: data, transport planning, urban planning, transit, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, canada, urban form, transit, land use transport link

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

An interesting slice of history regarding a writer who was an early influence on my thinking. Mumford's relation to her is intriguing- first encouraging her to publish, then writing a patronizing review, but later coming around somewhat. Also intriguing: her Toronto connections with Marshall McLuhan, Hans Blumenfeld.

Keywords: urban planning, history

Keywords: land use transport link, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: land use transport link, urban planning, transport planning

By incorporating characteristics of the built environment into models of travel behavior, much can be said about household travel distances, automobile ownership, and mode choice. This research investigates the relative significance of a variety of measures of urban form, both at trip-makers' home neighborhoods and at trip ends. The travel data come from the 1990 San Francisco Bay Area Travel Surveys, and the land-use data are largely constructed from hectare-level descriptions provided by the Association of Bay Area Governments.

After controlling for demographic characteristics, the measures of accessibility, land use mixing, and land use balance proved to be highly statistically significant and influential in their impact on household vehicle miles traveled (VMT), automobile ownership, and mode choice. In contrast, under the majority of models (with the important exception of the vehicle-ownership models), density's impact was negligible, after controlling for accessibility. In many cases, balance, mix, and accessibility were found to be more relevant (as measured by elasticities) than several household and traveler characteristics that often form a basis for travel behavior prediction. Moreover, the apparent influence that these variables, particularly accessibility, have on travel behavior is dramatic.

If a societal objective is reduced automobile use and dependence, while maintaining or improving general accessibility levels, these results lend empirical support to the promotion of a variety of land-use policies, such as regional growth containment, the raising and/or removal of density/intensity caps, and the establishment of mixed-use and flexible zoning standards throughout urban areas. These results also represent a step forward in the inclusion of measures of urban form in travel behavior forecasting models; thanks to the technology of geographical information systems and the increasing availability of detailed land-use data sets, such measures can be computed for a multitude of zones at relatively low cost.

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, history

Keywords: smart growth, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, accessibility

An interesting study. He makes the useful note that a panel survey where some people choose to move is not strictly a random sample; there was some underlying reason why those people chose to move, so you have a self-selected samples (p. 271). I don't fully buy his assumption that movers were in equilibrium with neighbourhood prior to moving; it's a major assumption, which he acknowledges and tests towards the end of the paper. However, it's still a useful experiment: even if the movers were trying to self-select, if the move allows them to reduce/increase VMT, it suggests that urban form is an enabler for desired travel behaviour, a necessary condition for behaviour change.

All told, a very methodologically cautious paper, with some good insights.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link, travel behaviour

A very useful article regarding the land use-transport link. They examined courses taught on the subject, and their syllabi. The key books were MooTho94 and Dow92/Dow04, and Cer96b was a key article, as was the debate between Ewi97 and GorRic97. Other publications included Giu95, Cra98, and Lev99.

Keywords: land use transport link, transport planning, urban form, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, spatial modelling

Keywords: transit, urban planning, transport planning

Some interesting thoughts. 1) Their “compact city” policy seems to have led to a polycentric region, with the edge regions (at the boundary of the dense inner city and the car-oriented outer world) developing into subcentres. Most of this is due to earlier policies of motorway expansion and subcentre promotion. However, public transport patronage has risen. 2) Public transport expansion has been less effective than changes in urban form. Expansion to new developments has not proven feasible, due to chicken-and-egg issues. 3) The a,b,c location policy aimed to force employers with large numbers of employees/visitors to take class A sites, defined as having good public transport facilities running in several directions, and with very strict parking place supply. Class B and C sites have softer parking regimes and siting requirements. It's a national policy. While it has been evaluated as a failure (mostly due to application to only 15% of all locations, since it only applies to new developments), it is continuing.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, parking, accessibility

Keywords: urban planning, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, streets

Transportation and land use research of the past decade has focused in large part on the question of whether manipulating land uses in the direction of “smart growth” alternatives can reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) or otherwise improve travel behavior. Yet the notion of “manipulating” land uses implies that the alternative is somehow self-organized or market-based. This view appears to underestimate the extent to which current planning interventions in the United States-largely focused on lowering development densities, mandating ample road and parking designs, and separating land uses-impose an auto-oriented template on most new development. Rather than a market failure, the paucity of “smart growth” alternatives may be a planning failure-the result of municipal regulatory exclusion. This problem definition would shift the burden of proof for policy reform, as uncertainty in travel-behavior benefits would hardly justify the continuation of exclusionary regulations. If municipal regulations in fact constrain alternatives to low-density auto-oriented development, one would expect developers to perceive unsatisfied market interest in such development. This article studies, through a national survey (676 respondents), US developers' perceptions of the market for pedestrian- and transit-oriented development forms. Overall, respondents perceive considerable market interest in alternative development forms, but believe that there is inadequate supply of such alternatives relative to market demand. Developer-respondents attribute this gap between supply and demand principally to local government regulation. When asked how the relaxation of these regulations would affect their product, majorities of developers indicated that such liberalization woud lead them to develop in a denser and more mixed-use fashion, particularly in close-in suburban locales. Results are interpreted in favor of land-policy reform based on the expansion of choice in transportation and land use. This view contrasts with a more prevalent approach which conditions policy interventions on scientific evidence of travel-behavior modification.

An excellent article, rebutting the claims of many others in the research community. The abstract is an excellent summary of the points made in this article. References BoaCra01, EwiCer01, Cra99 and Dow92. The latter is quoted: “[T]he belief that sprawl is caused primarily by market failures is based on the false assumption that there is a freely operating land use market in US metropolitan areas. No metropolitan area has anything remotely approaching a free land use market because of local regulations adopted for parochial political, social and fiscal purposes.”

Keywords: urban planning, land use transport link, equity, zoning

Keywords: urban form, transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

A very interesting read. Litman raises a number of issues associated with housing that I hadn't considered-my first reaction is to question Vancouver's downtown development patterns. Are parking requirements responsible for the tower fad, by making townhouse and four-story apartment development uneconomic for developers? On interesting bit of trivia: curb cuts reduce onstreet parking capacity. His parking management solutions are quite valuable and innovative ideas, and the studies he cites in Victoria and Mississauga are useful; I should follow up on all of his references. Of the management solutions, the two ideas I found novel were: shared parking, where apartments and businesses share spaces due to opposite peak demand times - very practical for residential downtowns; transportation management associations, where a neighbourhood organisation is formed to trade parking in a neighbourhood. I was initially convinced by his arguments about reducing developer incentive to create low-income housing, but I'm now a little skeptical; figure 12, in particular, says to me that in a scenario where 0 parking spaces are required, developers will have a huge incentive to produce high income housing, since the relative profit difference will be so much greater. Of course, this ignores the entire demand side of the equation. Overall, I think more analysis is needed to determine the real effect on developers.

Keywords: parking, urban planning, transportation demand management, equity

A short but interesting look at the failures around the Blue Line in Los Angeles. When transportation planners choose a transit alignment through an industrial/abandoned area with cheap land, I think the ridership estimates need to be informed by the miserable urban realm around transit stations... but I imagine they completely ignore such micro features.

Keywords: urban planning, transit-oriented development

Keywords: urban planning, transit-oriented development, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, pedestrian planning, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

A classic, apparently. As summarized by TalEll02, his main criteria for good form are 1) vitality: the support of biological requirements; 2) sense: mental perception and differentiation of a settlement; 3) fit: the match between pattern and behaviour; 4) access: being able to reach resources; 5) control of the use of the settlement; and “meta-criteria” of efficiency (cost) and justice (equity).

Keywords: urban form, urban design, urban planning

Keywords: urban form, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: streets, urban planning, transport planning, street design

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, streets, street design

Keywords: urban planning, urban form, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: streets, urban planning, urban form, transport planning, street design, urban design

Keywords: urban planning, urban design

Keywords: urban planning, urban design

Keywords: sociology, equity, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: location choice, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, energy, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: ecology, urban planning

Keywords: canada, firm behaviour, location choice, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: parking, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: canada, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: ilute, transport modelling, urban planning

Some empirical findings are presented on the relationship between urban form and work trip commuting efficiency, drawn from the analysis of 1986 work trip commuting patterns in the greater Toronto area. Work trip commuting efficiency is measured with respect to the average number of vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) per worker in a given zone. Preliminary findings include VKT per worker increases as one moves away from both the central core of the city and from other high-density employment centers within the region; job-housing balance, per se, shows little impact on commuting VKT; and population density, in and of itself, does not explain variations on commuting VKT once other urban structure variables have been accounted for.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, canada, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: transport modelling, ilute, canada, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: canada, transit, transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the historical evolution of personal travel behavior in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) over the past 35 years. The analysis indicates that in many respects the GTA taken as a whole is similar to other cities within North America in terms of increasing auto ownership; increasing individual auto-drive trip rates; increasing suburbanization of population and employment into areas poorly served by transit; increasingly complex travel patterns; and transit, at best, maintaining a constant number of trips per capita but losing modal share. The analysis also highlights ways in which the GTA, particularly the city of Toronto, deviates from the North American “norm.” These include transit per capita ridership, overall mode splits, revenue-cost operating ratios are still extremely high by North American standards; the regional commuter rail system has been very successful in attracting increasing numbers of commuters from outside Toronto into the Toronto central area; the continuing strength of the Toronto central area has provided a strong, viable transit service; and more generally, the relatively high density and transit orientation of development throughout the city of Toronto is highly supportive of transit.

Some very useful background on the transportation context of Toronto. While I grew up in that city, I actually knew fairly little about the evolution of its transportation system, so this was quite useful to me. Not very revolutionary in content (it's just a basic historical review), but worthwhile; a few good references (Mee02, Shi97, PucLef96, WriLov02).

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, canada, transit, urban form

A good report, with a realistic and progressive vision for the future. I found the maps comparing Toronto, Square One and Pearson trip ends extremely interesting (figures II.7 - II.9).

Keywords: transport planning, canada, urban planning, transit, land use transport link, urban form

Keywords: canada, transit, transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link, urban form

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban form, urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, history, urban form

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, smart growth, urban growth boundary

detailed annotation

Keywords: urban economics, transport planning, urban planning, congestion pricing, transportation demand management, transit, land use transport link, zoning

Keywords: urban planning, sociology, equity

Keywords: urban form, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: streets, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: sociology, urban planning, history

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: history, urban planning, urban design, urban politics

Keywords: history, urban planning

Keywords: history, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, history

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

An interesting look at Munich, Vienna and Zurich. Their approaches to funding are similar to Vancouver's, but they've done some very innovative projects, including narrowing arterials while maintaining capacity, and extensive parking management plans.

Keywords: bicycle planning, pedestrian planning, parking, urban planning, traffic calming

Keywords: urban planning, smart growth

Keywords: smart growth, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, equity, parking

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: history, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, ecology, urban form

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, ecology, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: ecology, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: ecology, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, energy, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form, land use transport link, energy

This was the first I read by these authors; this article and their 1989 book are classic texts in the field.

It's an ambitious and impressive effort, although I doubt that anyone will ever completely believe either their data or their results. Nevertheless, the data collection effort is laudable, especially when they include information on parking and relative speeds. Since reading this, I've improved my stats quite a bit, and I'd like to revisit it (or their 1999 followup) and see if I buy their results and conclusions. I'd also like to look into the econometric models they criticised.

One choice quote: “Toronto has a much stronger transit system (50?? vehicle miles of service per capita) than do U.S. or Australian cities, a feature with its dense land use; its provision for automobiles is also much less than that in U.S. and Australian cities. The diversity of its transit systems, which include commuter rail, subway, modern trams on-street and new LRT on separated tracks, electric trolleys, and diesel buses (as well as comprehensive cycle ways), provides a powerful comparison to nearby Detroit, which has an almost complete commitment to the automobile. The per capita gasoline consmuption in Detroit is double that in Toronto; transit use is 0.8 percent of total passenger miles in Detroit, compared with 16.7 percent in Toronto. However, the difference in gasoline consumption in Detroit and Toronto cannot be explained simply by the difference in transit use. For example, if all of Toronto's transit users transferred to car the per capita use of gasoline would increase by 53 gallons, making Toronto's usage still 184 gallons per capita lower than that of Detroit. The Toronto transit system is part of an overall more energy-efficient city, despite Toronto having lower gasoline prices in 1980 and less fuel-efficient vehicles than the U.S. Indeed, Toronto is one of the few cities in the world with well-developed policies for transportation energy conservation based on land use strategies.”

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, canada, energy, land use transport link, urban form, transit

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, energy

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, energy, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transit, urban form

detailed annotation

There is a growing international movement, “The New Urbanism”, which seeks to reconnect transport with land use and in particular to establish transit-oriented development where higher-density, mixed-use areas built around high-quality transit systems provide a focused urban structure that can help to loosen the grasp of automobile dependence. There are many case studies around the world of cities which demonstrate this process of reconnecting land use and transport. The cases of Singapore, Hong Kong, Zurich (Switzerland), Copenhagen (Denmark), Freiburg (Germany), Toronto and Vancouver (Canada), Portland, Oregon (USA) and Perth (Australia) are briefly described here to show the various levels of achievement in very different environments around the world.

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, canada, land use transport link, urban form

detailed annotation

Keywords: general interest, transport planning, urban planning, canada, land use transport link, urban form, energy, sustainability

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, energy

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, ecology, urban form, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form

Keywords: transport planning, urban form, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban form, energy, urban planning, sustainability

Keywords: urban form, energy, urban planning, sustainability

Keywords: transit, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transit, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transit, transport planning, urban planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: transit, transport planning, urban planning

I found their description of Houston interesting. I'd heard a lot about Houston's laissez-faire no-zoning policies, but I'd never read anything about the details. It sounds like they still suffer from the same social exclusion effects as many U.S. residential areas, but they use deed restrictions to enforce the exclusion instead of zoning laws. The authors give a surprisingly positive review to the HOV system overall, quite different from what I'd heard about HOV lanes in the present day context. Overall, Houston sounds like a depressing place to live or work. The complete rejection of land use control and the overwhelming dominance of the automobile turn me off. The Washington, D.C. case study wasn't very interesting to me, focusing mainly on transit-oriented development plans. The Portland section was slightly more interesting, again focusing on how land use goals are achieved by the agencies involved. The Vancouver section was mostly familiar, but did contain some interesting details that were new to me. There are some strange comments, though-they claim that the “European and Asian heritage of the region has also made the Vancouver community more accepting of transit” and characterise Vancouver as very unique within Canada. That's total rubbish-Canadian cities generally have an accepting attitude towards transit and a diverse cultural mix, and American cities have as much of a “European heritage” as Canadian ones. Sure, Vancouver is younger-but that should put it in the same boat as other young west coast cities, like Seattle. Some of their discussion regarding the history of SkyTrain is interesting, however, especially the idea that the Expo line was deliberately run through empty industrial areas to reduce NIMBY resistance and to allow new, denser transit-oriented development. They also note that TransLink does not own the land under the SkyTrain, allowing existing owners to make good use of the land, building towers around the tracks, etc. This is vastly better than the freeway model, where the land underneath and nearby is just dead space. Interestingly, they note that both Canadian and American government agencies put out a Request For Proposals (RFP) for a low-cost site, but only Canadian agencies can make location a requirement-i.e., requiring a site on the SkyTrain line.

I'm a bit dubious about their Ottawa section. They speak in glowing terms about many of the details of the system, and it doesn't always jibe with my experience when I lived there. Granted, I lived in a lousy area (far from the transitway) with a poor commute pattern. But there was a huge chunk of underserviced city where I lived, and I did see how the policies were working out on the ground. However, the policies sound like good ideas, at the least. They started with a bizarre statistic to make Ottawa look good: “Passengers per route mile in the first year,” a statistic biased towards bus systems, before development associated with a fixed rail system is completed. It's nice that (like Vancouver) they officially prioritise transit over road improvements, and that they consider it an official service. Their policy of building early in suburban areas is also an excellent idea, as is the policy of forcing regional shopping centres to be within 5 minutes walk of a transit station. (I have to wonder if that applies to big box zones, though-they were certainly abundant in the Ottawa area when I lived there. The abhorrent South Keys development all happened under these policies.) The Transitway design is clever, since they left enough room to allow later conversion to a rail system. One telling quote: “These services are adapted to, and as a result, help reinforce, the region's suburban landscape. In Ottawa-Carleton, it is accepted that low-density living environments are preferred by most residents, and that transit programs should in no way seek to alter this settlement pattern, but rather to serve it.” To be fair, that pattern may be changing now-the condo boom has definitely hit Ottawa. I suspect some of these sentences reflect the suburban American audience of this report. Ottawa also has taken a serious attitude towards directing job growth to transit corridors, in a manner similar to the Dutch ABC system. They also route buses through subdivision collector roads instead of arterial streets, to make for easier pedestrian access and avoiding the fight to access buses on arterials. (This may explain some of my confusion with the bus system, since I was more accustomed to the Toronto approach. It may also explain why buses were often poor choices for reaching retail areas, usually located on the arterials. It sounds like that was mostly political bad luck, though, not design-developers have insisted on siting commercial development on the arterials, not the planners' first choice.) Their reduction in downtown parking is admirable, with a 15% reduction from 1975 to 1984, a period of regression for most cities. They don't really comment much on the fact that many Transitway stations are built in parkland with no adjacent development, but they do note that future stations are being built in advance of development, with an aim to integrate better with mixed-use neighbourhoods. They claim pessimistically that the high-density transit-oriented residential demand had reached saturation point (!!) in Ottawa by 1993. At the end of the day, they've had difficulty achieving their goals, with regional employment share near transit stations remaining fairly static from 1986-1991. But they're still far ahead of most of North America.

Keywords: transit, transport planning, urban planning, canada, land use transport link

Keywords: transit, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: zoning, equity, urban economics, urban planning

Keywords: land use transport link, urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: urban planning, zoning, smart growth

Some interesting discussion. This design served as the prototype for suburban layouts for quite a while, although the results have not met the optimistic expectations laid out here. Many of his goals are laudable (walking distance to all amenities, avoid forcing children to cross arterials, etc.) while others are not (promoting segregation).

“It is plain that arterial highways must necessarily run in every direction and turn the street system into a network, and that residential life must occupy the interstitial spaces.” This marked one of the first times that a neighbourhood was planned inside the bounds of a square of “arterials,” and that framing proved popular, although Jane Jacobs has made strong arguments against it. Perry represents Jacobs' antithesis, I think: patriarchal and paternalist, aiming to plan and provide for whatever needs he considers valid. He calls the regular grid of equal-sized streets “leading nowhere in particular” while his meandering discontinuous street plan is “leading to places where people go.” It's a deceptively persuasive argument-who would be against good design?-but it's ultimately patronising and controlling.

Keywords: urban planning, urban design, streets

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, zoning

Discusses urban form in the freeway era, the different connectivities of the grid system and the “ladder” system of the freeway era, and Houston in particular. Some very interesting ideas (judging from references), especially the notion of the freeway system enforcing a hierarchy, and forming spiralling patterns in contrast to the grid system. Unfortunately, my library doesn't have a copy...

Keywords: architecture, urban planning, transport planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, architecture

Keywords: urban planning, canada

detailed annotation

This book examines the development of Vancouver's unique approach to zoning, planning, and urban design from the early 1970s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. By the late 1990s, Vancouver had established a reputation in North America for its planning achievement, especially for its creation of a participative, responsive, and design-led approach to urban regeneration and redevelopment. This system has other important features: an innovative approach to megaproject planning, a system of cost and amenity levies on major schemes, a participative process to underpin active neighbourhood planning, and a sophisticated panoply of design guidelines. These systems, processes, and their achievements place Vancouver at the forefront of international planning practice. The Vancouver Achievement explains the keys to its success, and evaluates its approach to planning and design against internationally accepted criteria. Generously illustrated with over 160 photos and figures, this book - the first comprehensive account of contemporary planning and urban design practice in any Canadian city - will appeal to academic and professional audiences, as well as the general public.

Keywords: history, canada, urban planning, urban politics, architecture, streets, urban design

detailed annotation

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form, transit, land use transport link

Keywords: canada, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: ecology, urban planning

Keywords: urban form, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, history

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form

Keywords: land use transport link, urban planning, transit

detailed annotation

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, pedestrian planning, traffic calming, streets

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, traffic calming

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: architecture, urban planning

Keywords: parking, urban planning

Research in transportation, urban design, and planning has examined associations between physical environment variables and individuals' walking and cycling for transport. Constructs, methods, and findings from these fields can be applied by physical activity and health researchers to improve understanding of environmental influences on physical activity. In this review, neighborhood environment characteristics proposed to be relevant to walking/cycling for transport are defined, including population density, connectivity, and land use mix. Neighborhood comparison and correlational studies with nonmotorized transport outcomes are considered, with evidence suggesting that residents from communities with higher density, greater connectivity, and more land use mix report higher rates of walking/cycling for utilitarian purposes than low-density, poorly connected, and single land use neighborhoods. Environmental variables appear to add to variance accounted for beyond sociodemographic predictors of walking/cycling for transport. Implications of the transportation literature for physical activity and related research are outlined. Future research directions are detailed for physical activity research to further examine the impact of neighborhood and other physical environment factors on physical activity and the potential interactive effects of psychosocial and environmental variables. The transportation, urban design, and planning literatures provide a valuable starting point for multidisciplinary research on environmental contributions to physical activity levels in the population.

Keywords: active transportation, urban planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban form, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, urban form, land use transport link, history

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: active transportation, history, urban planning

According to Hall (1997), this includes discussion of methodological problems with NewKen87.

Keywords: energy, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, ecology

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: canada, urban planning

This looks like a great book, with some fascinating examples of bad ideas from a former mayor of Toronto.

Keywords: canada, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, ilute, canada, urban form, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, urban design, urban form

Keywords: urban form, urban planning, equity

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, transit, land use transport link, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form

Keywords: urban planning, new urbanism

Keywords: urban form, streets, urban planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban form, streets, urban planning, land use transport link

Keywords: urban planning, history, urban design

Keywords: urban planning, history, urban design, new urbanism

Keywords: urban planning, equity, parking

Keywords: urban planning, finance

Keywords: urban planning

The aim of the paper is to examine whether parking restraint policies may have impacts on the economic vitality of urban centres. Literature from empirical, attitudinal and modelling studies is reviewed within a structure based around a conceptual framework of parking impacts. The search for relevant material was undertaken both for the UK and overseas, but the discussion and conclusions were related to the UK context. Original modelling was undertaken and is reported here. This review found that as parking restraint policies have not been previously implemented with consistency or longevity, there is a lack of direct evidence, given that land-use impacts typically involve a long-term response. Furthermore, different methods of examining impacts have come to very different conclusions. Attitudinal evidence suggests that there is a high level of sensitivity to parking provision, whereas aggregate statistical studies tend to find only a weak relationship. The reasons underlying these differences are discussed. Land-use/transport models show impacts if there is sufficient change in generalized cost, although the spatial distribution of impacts, and impacts by household or employment disaggregation, vary considerably. Given the inconclusive nature of the evidence to date, only tentative policy implications can be drawn. Recommendations for further research are outlined, both for empirical study and for model enhancements.

Keywords: urban planning, parking

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning

Keywords: bicycle planning, pedestrian planning, urban planning, urban design, street design, streets

Keywords: urban design, new urbanism, urban planning

Keywords: new urbanism, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, smart growth

Keywords: new urbanism, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, equity

Keywords: urban planning, canada, smart growth

A good article summarizing the history of the GVRD and the effectiveness of its growth management. Invaluable for anyone new to the Vancouver planning scene, or for those who just want to step back momentarily and look at the big picture.

Keywords: urban planning, canada, smart growth, urban growth boundary

In many provinces in Canada, development charges are collected by municipal governments to help pay for the capital costs associated with urban growth. Hardly anywhere, however, is there an attempt to structure development charges so as to achieve planning goals. This article examines the disconnect between fiscal and planning goals by tracking the evolution of development charge regimes in a particular urban region, namely the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. The authors pose the question: why do so many municipalities adopt average cost approaches to calculating development charges when it is widely assumed that a marginal cost approach is superior from an infrastructure and land-use efficiency (i.e., planning) perspective?

The typical explanations put forward to account for this preference are examined and found wanting. A fuller explanation requires an understanding of developer-municipal conflict over the principles involved in the design of development charges. This leads us to an account of the emergence of development charges in Ontario and the evolving debate between municipalities and developers over who should pay for the infrastructure needed to support growth. This story reveals that there has been a gradual shift in municipal infrastructure financing practices from a marginal cost or “site-specific” approach, favoured by developers, to an average cost or “municipal-wide” approach, favoured by municipalities. In the conclusions, a number of factors underlying this evolution are identified.

Keywords: canada, urban planning, urban politics, finance

Keywords: pedestrian planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: urban planning

Keywords: geography, urban planning

Keywords: geography, urban planning

Dutch ABC system.

Keywords: urban planning, location choice, transport planning, firm behaviour

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, history, geography

Keywords: land use transport link, transport planning, urban planning

“You're the expert,” says the client. “If you can't produce an estimate, nobody can.” “I'm not paying you for guesses,” says the supervisor. “Where are the facts to back up your position?” I once told a client that I could not in good conscience produce a forecast of the daily use of a proposed facility because there had never been a facility of that type in the region, and there was no experience on which to base a forecast. I was told, without even a pretense of politeness, “If you won't forecast, I'll get another consultant.” Another consultant was hired, and a forecast was made and paid for. Should the forecast be considered a good technical estimate, or a fiction produced to garner a fee by pleasing the client?

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning, transport modelling

Keywords: urban planning, transport planning, urban form

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Interesting. Waddell gives a nod to Miller's 98 TRCP paper, generally agreeing that it's a good description of an “ideal model.” Waddell's model definitely tries to do a better job than earlier models, but the simulation may still be too coarse to achieve its goals. There is no modelling of the household, or much modelling of decision-making procedures within the household. They use the same one-year timestep as Miller, but only a five-year timestep for calculation of the transportation network. Their ability to deal with other modes is seriously limited - while disaggregation brings the scale down to a reasonable level, they don't model automobile ownership, one of the key decisions. They note the difficulty of validation against historical data; even with a relatively stable period (1980-1994, little job or pop changes), there's a fair bit of difference between their model and others' models. And of course they can't hope to predict big changes - like Weyerhaueser closing a plant. They're also still fairly cellular automata based - transition rules instead of behavioural modelling.

Keywords: transport modelling, transport planning, urban planning, land use transport link

Keywords: history, transport planning, urban planning, transit

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: transit, transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: smart growth, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, zoning, urban economics, equity

Some interesting historical notes on regional government: the abandonment of regional government in London, Barcelona and Copenhagen in the 1980s, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul tax sharing arrangement. He argues in favour of direct election of regional governments (e.g., Portland) rather than selection from local government officials (e.g., Vancouver, San Francisco) or appointment by state (e.g., Minneapolis-St. Paul). The article also has a more realistic view of governance and planning in the Greater Toronto Area than most articles I've read.

Keywords: sustainability, urban planning, governance, canada, public participation

This paper analyses the evolution of urban form in two North American metropolitan regions (Portland and Toronto) and asks how more sustainable regional form might come about in the future in these and other urban areas. In the past, dominant patterns of urban form have emerged in such regions at different historical periods. These morphological phases include mid 19th-century grids, streetcar suburb grids, garden suburbs, automobile suburbs and New Urbanist neighbourhoods (which have only recently made an appearance and may or may not become widespread). Judging by the performance of past types of urban morphology, five design values appear particularly important for more sustainable urban form in the future: compactness, contiguity, connectivity, diversity and ecological integration. Although these principles were not well supported by 20th-century development, contemporary movements such as the New Urbanism and Smart Growth re-emphasise them. The example of these two regions indicates that, in the absence of new technological, economic or geographical forces, public sector institutions and urban social movements represent the most likely means to bring about new, more sustainable types of urban form.

Keywords: urban form, canada, streets, history, transport planning, urban planning, new urbanism

Keywords: transport planning, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, history

Keywords: urban form, urban planning

Keywords: transport planning, finance, urban planning

Keywords: urban planning, canada

Keywords: urban planning, pedestrian planning