11.522: UIS Research Seminar (Fall 2008) - Discussion notes
There is a long history of efforts to utilize computer-based land use planning models in order to anticipate, and manage, the impacts of metropolitan growth. In the US, early efforts in the late fifties and sixties focused on the ripple effects on urban growth, urban spatial structure, and land prices of increasing automobile ownership and highway construction. In the seventies and eighties, energy price shocks and new attention to environmental externalities and ecology-based "limits to growth" resulted in the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and increased regulation of development based on environmental impact assessment. Over time, the initial enthusiasm about the use of large scale land use planning models has been tempered by various articles about the inherent limits of large-scale models (dating back to Doug Lee's famous article in JAPA in 1973, "A Requiem for Large Scale Modeling") and the conservative-led rollback of regulation in the eighties and nineties. Nevertheless, during the past two decades, there has been a resurgence of interest in large-scale land use modeling. The advent of the "information age" has increased the availability of relevant data, stimulated the growth of GIS and related technologies, greatly expanded access to computing, and dramatically reduced the cost of computer-based analysis and simulation modeling. Today, there is much less questioning about 'whether to use urban models' but much more sophistication about types of urban models, the roles that they can and do play in debating and designing urban futures, and the planning processes and professional expertise that make the most of detailed modeling and analysis.
For this seminar, I would like to stimulate discussion about a particular instance in which land use planning models are being used - namely, ongoing efforts to model and debate the future of metro Boston. The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) has undertaken a MetroFuture regional planning process during the past few years that has involved alternative scenario modeling using Comunity Viz add-ons to ArcGIS software. In addition, the state's GIS office (MassGIS) is helping a new Governor and the state's Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA) develop a 'climate roadmap' for understanding the energy and environmental impacts of metropolitan growth. Also, the Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS) that support cross-agency transportation analysis for metro Boston has been tweaking its EMME2 model in an effort to understand the changing travel patterns that are likely to results from changing energy prices and new "intelligent transportation system" technologies as well as future development and land use patterns. The modeling efforts in Boston are recent and involve some new technology, but are by no means the most extensive metropolitan model that has been developed to date. (The most sophisticated large scale urban model is UrbanSim - see the reference below. However, UrbanSim is far too detailed and data hungry to be used without a substantial multi-year model development effort.) In any event, there is far more background than we can cover both in the published literature and in the government documents regarding urban modeling. At Tuesday's seminar, I will focus on one small aspect of the Boston modeling efforts - the class project last Spring whereby students in 11.521 examined the vehicle-mile-travel (VMT) implications of alternative metro growth strategies.We will use this project as a window in to the world of urban modeling and the many issues associated with incorporating urban models into urban and regional planning. The class project took as a given the MAPC year-2030 population and employment projections (at a traffic analysis zone scale) for two different growth scenarios: "let it be" and "winds of change." The project then modeled the sub-TAZ location of new residences under both scenarios and used data from MassGIS to estimate the VMT implications. The MassGIS data combined several of their existing data layers about land use, population, businesses, and the like into 250x250m grid cells in order to develop various 'accessibility' measures and related VMT estimates for each of the 250x250m grid cells within the state.
To prepare for Tuesday's discussion, please skim over the first three websites and articles in the Reference list below. The remaining articles are more than we can expect you to read on short notice but will be background for subsequent discussions and followup. Keep in mind the Discussion Questions listed below when reviewing the material. In addition, here is a link to a PDF-formatted version of the powerpoint slides that I presented during the seminar .
(1) MetroFuture, website: http://metrofuture.org/ (accessed 9-15-08), An Initiative of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), http://www.mapc.org. [Skim the material under the tabs at the top of the main page: what is metrofuture, goals and objective, implementation strategies, etc. Be sure to look at the 'up-to-date technology and planning tools' link (http://metrofuture.mapc.org/content/metrofutures-technical-analysis) in the 'practices and tools' section.]
(2) MetroFuture, "Exercise #1: Explore a Scenario - Your Guide to the 'Winds of Change' Scenario," December, 2006. [Read this description of the 'winds of change' scenario: http://mit.edu/11.521/proj08/metrofuture/explore_scenario_woc.pdf ]
(3) Jacqz, C., "How Distance to Common Household Destinations Varies as a Function of Household Density," MassGIS working document, April, 2008. [Skim paper with emphasis on understanding the data sources and GIS processing involved in estimating VMT for residents of each 250x250m grid cells. The paper is attached to my email as a PDF file since it is unpublished and not yet for general circulation.]
Other Background Readings:
(4) Ferreira, J. (2008), "GIS Evolution: Are We Messed Up By Mashups, " Comment on French and Drummond: “The Future of GIS in Planning: Converging Technologies and Diverging Interests,” Journal of the American Planning Association, Spring 2008.
(5) Harris, B., (1989) “Beyond Geographic Information Systems: Computers and the Planning Professional”, Journal of
the American Planning Association, 55, 85-92.
(6) Klosterman, R., (2001) “Evolving conceptions of Information Systems Technology”, in Planning Support System:
Integration Geographic Information Systems, Models and Visualization Tools, Brail, R. and Klosterman, R.,
(eds.), ESRI Press, Corona, California.
(7) Lee, 1973 D.B. Lee (1973), "A Requiem for Large Scale Modeling", Journal of The American Institute of Planners, 39 (1973) (3), pp. 163–178.
(8) Waddell, P. (2002) , UrbanSim: Modeling Urban Development for Land Use, Transportation and Environmental Planning. Preprint of an article in the Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 68 No. 3, Summer 2002, pages 297-314. [http://www.urbansim.org/papers/UrbanSim-JAPA.pdf]
(a) What are the different types of urban growth models? What do they assume? What do they emphasize? When are they appropriate? What is the difference between 'alternative scenario modeling' and traditional large-scale urban models?
(b) Who benefits from urban growth modeling? How does their use change the planning process? Is MAPC a netural party? Is this a PPGIS (public participation GIS) example? What if MetroFuture had no urban growth model?
(c) How does the metropolitan information infrastructure impact the type of urban modeling that is possible, practical, useful for more than the agency that builds it, etc.? GIS technology is evolving from a desktop application, to enterprise GIS, and eventually to geoprocessing services. How will this change the structure and usefulness of urban modeling? What agencies should be involved and how can they contribute to a shared model?
(d) Are the privacy and 'big brother' issues sufficient to limit access to and use of the types of data needed to develop the 250x250m grid cell layers that MassGIS produces? What about the next step where mileage data (from the safety inspections) for every registered car could be associated with each grid cell? How can these concerns be addressed while still making sufficient data available for urban modeling and analyses?
(e) What are the key regional planning issues for metro Boston? How can (should) urban modeling help in addressing these issues? Is it a matter of straightforward accounting of basic population, employment, infrastructure, and resource use? Are there complex interactions and ripple effects that require sophisticated modeling and counterintuitive results? Is it a zero sum game with winners and losers within the region? Is it a short vs. long-term planning problem? Is there a strategy that all parties might agree to?
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