Interest in assessing the sustainability of socio-ecological systems of urban areas has increased notably, with additional attention generated due to the fact that half the world's population now lives in cities. Urban areas face both a changing urban population size and increasing sustainability issues in terms of providing good socioeconomic and environmental living conditions. Urban planning has to deal with both challenges. Households play a major role by being affected by urban planning decisions on the one hand and by being responsible – among many other factors – for the environmental performance of a city (e.g. energy use). We here present an agent-based decision model referring to the city of Vienna, the capital of Austria, with a population of about 1.7 million (2.3 million within the metropolitan area, the latter being more than 25% of Austria's total population). Since the early 1990s, after decades of negative population growth, Vienna has been experiencing a steady increase in population, mainly driven by immigration. The aim of the agent-based decision model is to simulate new residential patterns of different household types based on demographic development and migration scenarios. Model results were used to assess spatial patterns of energy use caused by different household types in the four scenarios (1) conventional urban planning, (2) sustainable urban planning, (3) expensive centre and (4) no green area preference. Outcomes show that changes in preferences of households relating to the presence of nearby green areas have the most important impact on the distribution of households across the small-scaled city area. Additionally, the results demonstrate the importance of the distribution of different household types regarding spatial patterns of energy use.
Linking time use of the inhabitants of a city with their energy consumption and urban form is an approach which allows integration of the social dimension into research on sustainable urban development. While much has been written about the planning of cities and its implications for human social life, the question of the relationship between time-use patterns and urban form remains underexplored. This is all the more astonishing as time-use statistics offer a unique tool for analysing socio-economic changes regarding family and household structures, gender relations, working hours, recreational behaviour and consumption patterns. Furthermore, spatial planning plays a significant role in establishing time structures. With this paper we aim to explore the possibility of using the time-use data of an urban population to find links between individual time-use patterns and urban form. We describe a case study in Vienna where we addressed time use and mobility of citizens in a participatory approach to jointly develop an integrated socio-ecological model of urban time-use patterns and energy consumption. OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 8023
Urban planning must address both a changing urban population size and increasing sustainability issues in terms of providing good socioeconomic and environmental living conditions. Households play a major role in that they are affected by urban planning decisions but are partly responsible for the environmental performance (e.g., energy use) of a city. Here, we present an agent-based decision model of the city of Vienna, the capital of Austria, with a population of approximately 1.7 million. The model results are used to assess the spatial patterns of energy use caused by different household types. The outcomes show that changes in households' preferences regarding the presence of nearby green areas have the most important impact on the distribution of households across the smallscaled city area. Additionally, the results demonstrate the importance of the distribution of different household types regarding spatial patterns of energy use.
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