A Modeling Framework: To Analyze the Relationship between Accessibility, Land Use and Densities in Urban Areas

Abstract

The study proposes a framework to model the three-dimensional relationship among density, land use, and accessibility in urban areas constructively contributing to overcome the limitations noted in the domains of urban planning and transport planning. First, most of the existing studies have focused on the topological characteristics in capturing the accessibility, but a limited attention has been given on measuring the accessibility by considering both topological and roadway characteristics. Second, the existing research studies have acknowledged the relationship among density, land use, and accessibility while a limited attention has been given to develop a modeling framework to capture the three-dimensional relationship. The modelling framework was tested in three urban areas in Sri Lanka. The research first analyzed the three-dimensional relationship among density, land use, and accessibility in the case studies. Then, the study developed a set of regression models to capture the density from the land use and accesability. The proposed model recorded a satisfactory level of accuracy (i.e., R2 > 0.70) on a par with internationally accepted standards. The relationship was further elaborated through a decision tree analysis and 4D plot diagrams. Findings of the study can be utilized to model the density of a given land use and the correspondent accessibility scenarios. The proposed model is capable of quantifying the impact of the changes in the density correspondent to the accessibility and land use. Therefore, the study concludes that this will be an effective tool for decision-makers in the fields of land-use planning and transport planning for scenario building, impact analysis, and the formulation of land use zoning and urban development plans aiming at the overarching sustainability of future cities.

A Novel Approach to Measure the Pattern of Urban Agglomeration Based on the Road Network

“…Batty [29] identified the inherent relationship between the road network and historical evolution of cities as he mentioned that "the road network essentially contains the social, economic and cultural history of its space". Additionally, the modern development pattern of a city is firmly linked with the infrastructure development; hence this economic development is reflected by the street network configuration [5,22,23]. It indicates the level of urban agglomeration of a city by the aspects of economic prosperity which is clearly denoted by the evolution of road network [42].…”

“…This severely affected the model accuracy when evaluating the urban agglomeration, particularly of complex urban forms including urban conurbations [21]. The network centrality assessment method, which was evolved from the graph theory, has been extremely successful [19,22,23] in capturing the dynamics of the urban agglomeration as attempted by several scholars [7,20]. Even though the network centrality method captures the relative intensity of urban agglomerations, the method is yet to be developed to represent the clustered interpretation of the urban agglomeration [24].…”

Urban Boundary Demarcation—An iCN Model Approach

“…In the current urban and transportation studies, network science is considered the well-established approach to understand the diverse human interactions with space (Hillier and Vaughan 2007), (Jayasinghe et al 2015). It has been identified that the topology of the road network is a perfect proxy to distinguish the traffic flow, human activities, and urban movement of the cities (Jiang and Liu 2009), (Ma et al 2019), (Hillier and Iida 2005), (Jayasinghe et al 2021). On the other hand, (de Rijke et al 2020), (Jiang and Slocum 2020), (Levin 2019) distinguished that the living structure and natural boundary of cities can be well distinguished by the morphological characteris-tics of the transportation network.…”

“…topology of the road network is a perfect proxy to distinguish the traffic flow, human activities, and urban movement of the cities (Jiang and Liu 2009), (Ma et al 2019), (Hillier and Iida 2005), (Jayasinghe et al 2021). On the other hand, (de Rijke et al 2020), (Jiang and Slocum 2020), (Levin 2019) distinguished that the living structure and natural boundary of cities can be well distinguished by the morphological characteristics of the transportation network.…”

An Investigation of the Effects of New Bypass Roads on Build Form in Small Towns in Sri Lanka

“…The tool requires a 'network graph' file as the input and 'analysis option' to compute BC and CC [18]. This study utilizes the 'road-segments' graph method [19], [20] and the 'angular analysis' option to compute the shortest-path. Furthermore, the study considered two radiuses of a node to the network influence area as 500m and 10km to capture the attraction of pedestrian movement and the attraction of vehicle movement respectively.…”