Developing Densely: Estimating the Effect of Subway Growth on New York City Land Uses

Mixed land use has the advantages of promoting the economic and intensive utilization of land and improving the efficiency of land use, which can help alleviate the current urban problems and promote the sustainable development of cities. Existing studies have usually used quantitative indicators to reflect complex and diverse mixed land use situations, and the conclusions obtained usually cannot provide a basis for functional selection in mixed land use practices. Therefore, this study took Shenzhen as the study area to explore whether there are differences in the urban vibrancy enhancement among different mixed land use types. First, the block-scale mixed land use dataset of the study area was constructed. Second, the spatial distribution characteristics of the main functional types and urban vibrancy in the study area were explored. Finally, the impact of mixed land use types on urban vibrancy was explored by using a multiple linear regression model and setting land use type as the dummy variable. The results show that the number of mixed-function blocks in Shenzhen is relatively small, and the mixed land use degree still needs to be improved. Among the 12 main land use types in the study area, those containing industrial land are usually clustered in the northern industrial area of Shenzhen, those containing public or commercial service land are usually clustered in the city center, and those containing residential land are widely distributed in the study area. From the perspective of urban vibrancy, there is a phenomenon of “jobs–housing mismatch” in Shenzhen, as well as a problem of low urban vibrancy in the peripheral areas of the city. In addition, the urban vibrancy intensity of mixed land use types including residential or commercial land is higher, such as “administration+residential”, “residential+commercial”, “industrial+residential+commercial”, and “administration+residential+commercial” land, which includes residential or commercial land, is stronger, while. However, the urban vibrancy stability of mixed land use types including industrial land is higher, such as “industrial+residential” and “industrial+administration” land. The results of this study can provide a basis for future mixed land use practices in terms of land use type selection. For the urban central areas and subcenters in urban peripheral areas, mixed land use types such as “administration+residential”, “residential+commercial”, and “administration+residential+commercial” can be selected to enhance the urban vibrancy stability of the area. For industrial parks in urban peripheral areas, mixed land use types such as “industrial+residential”, “industrial+commercial”, “industrial+administration+residential”, and “administration+residential+commercial” can be selected to enhance the urban vibrancy intensity of the area.

The form of many Canadian cities has dramatically evolved over the past six decades due to urban sprawl. Several patterns can characterize this evolution including unlimited horizontal expansion of the city, leapfrog, and low‐density residential development at the outskirts, and widespread strip commercial and power centre retail development. Hamilton, Ontario is an example of a Canadian city that has experienced suburbanization and sprawled development for several decades. However, the nature of this sprawled development is unclear and its impact on urban form is not entirely understood. In this article, several hypotheses pertaining to sprawled land development and urban form are postulated and tested. The tests rely on point source data of the developed land parcels in Hamilton during the period 1950–2003. A number of spatial statistics techniques, including kernel estimation and complete spatial randomness (CSR) K‐function tests, are employed to examine the emerging nature of urban form. We hypothesize that while the city has been sprawling, the ongoing land development process is leading urban form into multinucleation. To support this assumption, we further hypothesize the existence of an interdependent spatial relationship between residential and commercial land uses at the emerging nuclei. Accordingly, we examine the strength of co‐clustering among these land use activities over time. The findings indicate that while the city has been sprawling, several consequent urban nuclei with mixed land use activities have been emerging and become more visible in recent years. This is an indication that the city's form is progressively becoming multinuclear. Furthermore, the estimates for the 1990s indicate interdependence between the locational patterns of residential and commercial land development. Co‐clustering between these two types of land uses is bi‐directional and occurs at a time lag of three to seven years. These findings affirm the existence of interdependence between land use activities at the observed nuclei, which support the emergence of a multinucleation.

This study examined the intra-urban freight trips pattern in Lagos State, Nigeria. Major traffic bottlenecks along selected roads served as data collection stations for this study. At each station, data were collected on type of vehicle, origin of trip, destination of trip, land use at origin and land use at destination by trained field assistants. A combination of observatory survey and questionnaire administration to freight vehicle drivers was used for the data collection. A total of 12,533 drivers of freight vehicles who at the time of the survey were conveying goods in their vehicles for delivery were randomly sampled. Both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were employed for data analysis. Simple percentages, averages, tabulation and charts are some of the descriptive statistical techniques employed to measure the spread of observations. Two-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypothesis that “freight vehicle’s trips do not vary by land use types in the study area”. Urban land use was found to significantly influence freight trips. The study revealed that commercial, industrial, residential and circulatory land uses are the pivots upon which urban freight movement revolves in the study area. Commercial land use is the largest generator (42%) and attractor (34%) of urban freight trips. Industrial land use generates 28% and attracts 20% of the urban freight trips, while residential land use generates 4% and attracts 26%. Also, circulatory land use generates 17% and attracts 8% of the urban freight trips. The analysis also revealed that small trucks are the commonly used vehicles for intra-urban freight movement in the study area accounting for about 47% of the freight trips. Also, freight vehicles’ trips significantly varied by land use types, F (4, 1) = 3097.39, P = 0.13. This study concludes that land use types played a significant role in the pattern of freight traffic distribution in the study area. It was therefore recommended that efforts should be directed towards effective freight transport planning and management in the study area.

Spatial justice requires equitable construction land allocation to realize disadvantaged regions’ development rights. Construction land reduction (CLR) in economically developed areas is a complex and multi-dimensional process of land spatial optimization. While optimizing the allocation of land resources, this process may also lead to challenges in spatial justice. This study assessed spatial injustice using construction land data from W-district, Shanghai, based on spatial simulation. Planning documents indicated that some areas had a net resident outflow; the simulation showed that promoting CLR decreased mixed land use in these areas. Control of construction land decreased industrial and mining storage and rural residential land; urban residential, commercial, and other construction land increased. Bottom-line planning thinking reduced spatial injustice by approximately 0.0393 overall (the reduction rate was nearly 14.05%). Under territorial spatial planning, construction land stock quotas were optimized; CLR quotas were transferred, creating significant differences in construction land internal structures. Weighted Gini coefficients suggested unfair distribution between urban residential and commercial land, with the latter being more concentrated. Industrial and mining storage, other construction, and urban residential land contribute to spatial injustice. Industrial and mining storage and urban residential land have positive marginal effects; those of commercial, rural residential, and other construction land are negative. Promoting centralized residences has consolidated scattered rural residential land; decreasing rural residential land inhibits spatial injustice reduction. Construction land and the population can be agglomerated simultaneously to reduce construction land inequality.

Non-point source pollution (NPS) besides point source pollution (PS) has contributed to pollutant loading into natural receiving water bodies. Due to the nature of NPS, the quantification of pollutant loading from NPS is very challenging but crucial to riverine water quality management, especially for the river reach flowing through urban areas. The water quality in the river reach of the Bow River flowing through the City of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, is affected by both PS and NPS. Thus, understanding and characterizing water quality of discharges (affected by NPS) into the river reach is necessary for better managing riverine water quality and preventing water quality degradation. In the paper, monitored event mean concentrations (EMCs) of stormwater runoff and mean concentrations of snowmelt and baseflow of seven common pollutants from sub-catchments, which are categorized into four land use types including commercial, industrial, residential and on-going development land uses, were used to investigate the linkage between land use and water quality. Statistical analysis techniques were adopted to identify differences or similarities in water quality among different flow types, different land use types, and among/between catchments of same land use. The results indicated that EMCs of many water quality parameters vary among different land use types and among/between catchments of same land use. The results also showed median EMCs of pollutants of snowmelt and baseflow are, in general, lower than those of stormwater runoff. In addition, Stormwater Management Model was employed to investigate the physical process that would affect water quality response to storm events for two typical land uses, industrial and residential land uses. The modeling results supported that wash-off of particulate matters might primarily affect water quality response of catchments between different land uses. All the results shed the light on the necessity of quantifying pollutant loading considering the characteristics of land uses.

The relationship between centrality and land use patterns: Empirical evidence from five Chinese metropolises

This study examines the spatiotemporal relationship between the newly built subway line and land price, focusing on difference and correlation between commercial and residential land uses. For a spatiotemporally sensitive analysis, Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) method is used to test land price data in Daejeon, South Korea. A new approach is suggested in the bandwidth selection process of GTWR to consider the interactive relationship between commercial and residential land uses. With the proposed approach, this study develops models to measure the effects of a newly built subway line on commercial and residential land prices. The estimates of the models indicate that commercial and residential land uses have an interactive relationship, and the effects from the nearby environments indicate geographically and also temporally different patterns for each land use. The distribution of coefficients shows that the effect size is greater on the commercial land price than on the residential land price. However, the geographical effect is wider on the commercial land price, while the temporal effect is longer on the residential land price. This study provides a novel perspective on empirical research about the effects of newly built public transit on land prices. Furthermore, the results imply that land price estimation needs to consider the mutual relationship between land uses and to be differentiated by the type of land use.

In urban ecosystems, woody vegetation communities and the ecosystem functions and habitat they provide are largely controlled by humans. These communities are assembled during development, landscaping, and maintenance processes according to decisions made by human actors. While vegetation communities on residential land uses are increasingly well studied, these efforts have generally not extended to other and uses, including commercial land uses; we thus know little about the vegetation communities on these land uses and how they are assembled. To fill this gap, I surveyed tree and shrub communities on office developments located in Redmond and Bellevue, Washington, USA, and explored whether aggregated and parcel scale socio-economic variables or variables describing the outcome of development and landscaping actions better explained variation in vegetation communities. I found that both tree and shrub communities are heterogenous, with distinct groups of sites characterized by native or ornamental vegetation. The outcome of actors’ decision making also explains more variation than aggregated or parcel scale socio-economic variables found significant on residential property. The observed heterogeneity in vegetation communities suggests that different ecosystem functions and habitat quantity and quality are provided on office developments; better provision of these functions is possible using currently existing developments as models. Further, the heterogeneity and observed differences in variable importance between office developments and residential land uses suggests that future urban ecology research must more carefully consider sampling design and that models of the urban ecosystem must account for different decision pathways on land uses. Going forward, research should examine other commercial land uses, commercial land use in additional ecotypes, and decision pathways followed by actors on commercial land uses.

Residential density change: Densification and urban expansion

Urban greenway and compact land use development: A multilevel assessment in Seoul, South Korea

Sources of Pollutants in Wisconsin Stormwater

BackgroundPhysical inactivity and associated co-morbidities such as obesity and cardiovascular disease are estimated to have large societal costs. There is increasing interest in examining the role of the built environment in shaping patterns of physical activity. However, few studies have: (1) simultaneously examined physical activity for leisure and utility; (2) selected study areas with a range of built environment characteristics; and (3) assessed the built environment using high-resolution land use data.MethodsData on individuals used for this study are from a survey of 1602 adults in selected sites across suburban Metro Vancouver. Four types of physical activity were assessed: walking to work/school, walking for errands, walking for leisure and moderate physical activity for exercise. The built environment was assessed by constructing one-kilometre road network buffers around each respondent's postal code. Measures of the built environment include terciles of recreational and park land, residential land, institutional land, commercial land and land use mix.ResultsLogistic regression analyses showed that walking to work/school and moderate physical activity were not associated with any built environment measure. Living in areas with lower land use mix, lower commercial and lower recreational land increased the odds of low levels of walking for errands. Individuals living in the lower third of land use mix and institutional land were more likely to report low levels of walking for leisure.ConclusionsThese results suggest that walking for errands and leisure have a greater association with the built environment than other dimensions of physical activity.

The Port of Brisbane Corporation is developing a world-class port facility at the mouth of the Brisbane River, Queensland, Australia. Located adjacent to Moreton Bay Marine Park and within Australia’s fastest growing region, the need to ensure appropriate environmental management practices is integral to port operations. A key element of the Corporation’s environmental responsibility is the effective management of stormwater generated from the site. As the first step towards developing a better understanding of the pollutant loads within the stormwater, the Corporation together with the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) undertook a series of rainfall simulation trials on various port land uses. Due to the unique nature of port operations, traffic types and storage modes, stormwater quality models used for typical urban land uses may not necessarily be applicable to port operations. Natural rainfall has high variability and unpredictability, and therefore the use of rainfall simulation can help to overcome these limitations with the ability to collect a large database in a short period of time. Using a specially designed rainfall simulator, twelve rainfall events typical to the region were simulated over a number of port specific land uses. Pollutant build-up and wash-off samples were collected and analysed for a range of potential stormwater pollutants. Preliminary testing indicates that surface build-up of pollutants within the port setting is comparable to that experienced in a commercial land use setting. However with the exception of zinc, wash-off pollutant concentrations are lower than that experienced within residential, commercial or industrial land use settings. Whilst sediment loads within the wash-off was higher than that reported for urban land uses, pollutants appeared bound to sediments, with the 0.75-75μm particle range being the most predominant. Therefore, water quality improvement strategies targeting the removal of suspended solids as a surrogate approach to removing pollutants may be valid. However, for any structural measures adopted for suspended solids removal to be effective, they should have the capability to remove specific particle size range/s. Consequently, stereo-typical device designs may not prove adequate in addressing this issue in port areas.

The maquiladora (maquila) economy has brought enormous change to Mexico's northern border region during the last few decades. Scholars have studied many aspects of the region's maquila economy, including bi‐national trade, a range of environmental issues, and social and cultural impacts arising from rapid industrialization. Few, however, have examined the relationship between industrialization and the development of urban land. We respond to this deficiency by investigating land use change in Ciudad Juárez, México, during the 1988-1993 period. Two objectives guide the research. First, we document the extent to which the maquila economy has fostered rapid population growth and employment change in Ciudad Juárez and other Mexican border cities. Second, a simple simulation procedure is used to show how growth of the maquila economy has distorted residential and commercial land development in the city. The results indicate that during the 1988-1993 period residential land in the city was “overdeveloped” while commercial land was “underdeveloped.” The results offer important clues for understanding the impacts of rapid industrialization, and for guiding urban planning efforts in Mexican border cities.

Zoning restrictions often exclusively permit one or a few particular types of land use. If the tightness of restrictions differs between land uses, the result may be that the market for land splits into segments referring to particular uses, because the arbitrage mechanism between various land use types is turned off. We provide evidence of such a segmentation of the Dutch land market into three compartments: agricultural, commercial, and residential use. We analyze transactions of ready-to-be developed land and find that residential land is much more expensive than commercial land. We also find that agricultural land is much cheaper than residential and commercial land. <i>(JEL R21, R52)</i>