A method for evaluating the balance of land use and multimodal transport system of new towns/cities using an integrated modeling framework

Abstract

The majority of cities in both developed and developing countries are confronted with negative externalities from imbalanced land-use and transportation systems. This is mainly due to fast urbanization process as well as the separated planning of the land use and transportation systems. In most of these countries, new towns and cities are being built in the suburban areas to meet the growing demands. However, there are limited methods in the literature detailing how the balance of land use and the transportation system can be examined, especially those involving new town developments. In this study, a framework is proposed. Within the proposed framework, an integrated land-use transport model is developed (using the Production, Exchange, and Consumption Allocation System (PECAS)) and calibrated to forecast land-use activities, which includes a land-use sub-model for estimating future land use patterns and a multimodal transport sub-model to predict travel demand. Furthermore, a method for evaluating the balance between land use activities and the transportation system is adopted and modified at both the local level – traffic analysis zone (TAZs) and system-level – region connecting the new city and main city. The proposed balance evaluation framework is applied to the Yangtze River New City (YRNC) of the City of Wuhan as a case study. The results from the case study show that the proposed framework can be used to examine the balance of land use and transportation system of new towns and cities at both local and regional levels as a versatile decision-support system (DSS) for sustainable planning and development of new towns and cities.