A Spatial-Indexing Model for Measuring Neighbourhood-Level Land-Use and Transport Integration

Abstract

Significant attention has been given in urban policy literature to the integration of land-use and transport planning and policies—with a view to curbing sprawling urban form and diminishing externalities associated with car-dependent travel patterns. By taking land-use and transport interaction into account, this debate mainly focuses on how a successful integration can contribute to societal well-being, providing efficient and balanced economic growth while accomplishing the goal of developing sustainable urban environments and communities. The integration is also a focal theme of contemporary urban development models, such as smart growth, liveable neighbourhoods, and new urbanism. Even though available planning policy options for ameliorating urban form and transport-related externalities have matured—owing to growing research and practice worldwide—there remains a lack of suitable evaluation models to reflect on the current status of urban form and travel problems or on the success of implemented integration policies. In this study we explore the applicability of indicator-based spatial indexing to assess land-use and transport integration at the neighbourhood level. For this, a spatial index is developed by a number of indicators compiled from international studies and trialled in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The results of this modelling study reveal that it is possible to propose an effective metric to determine the success level of city plans considering their sustainability performance via composite indicator methodology. The model proved useful in demarcating areas where planning intervention is applicable, and in identifying the most suitable locations for future urban development and plan amendments. Lastly, we integrate variance-based sensitivity analysis with the spatial indexing method, and discuss the applicability of the model in other urban contexts.

Integrating urban ecosystem sustainability assessment into policy-making: insights from the Gold Coast City

“…The study area was divided into 100 metre £ 100 metre grid cells and ArcGIS software was used to transfer parcel-scale aggregated composite index scores into grid cell scores. The aggregation of geographical data is widely used in the analysis of urban systems (Dur, Yigitcanlar, and Bunker 2014). However, there are many challenges, such as the modifiable areal unit problem, which is a widely recognized spatial analytical issue that affects the results of such analyses due to the scale or zoning of the space (Paez and Scott 2004).…”

Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment: Evaluating Residential Development Sustainability in a Developing Country Context

“…A similar method was used in a number of previous research studies (e.g., [21,[69][70][71][72][73][74]). The initial search identified a total of 128 sustainability indicators in three major sustainability categories of environmental, social and economic (see Table A1).…”

Planning, Development and Management of Sustainable Cities: A Commentary from the Guest Editors

“…Today, more and more cities are prioritizing assessment of sustainability of their cities or urban development; and many local governments have made efforts to develop thorough appraisal schemes with consideration for environment, society and economy dimensions-in line with the triple bottom approach [54][55][56]. However, current research and practice expose that sustainability assessment process itself raises weakness and threats, which need to be improved, especially in comparative analysis [57][58][59][60].…”