Effects and Frameworks to Estimate the Environmental and Public Health Impacts of Infill Development for Urban Planning

Abstract

Infill development is considered one of the effective countermeasures to reduce urban sprawl. It aims at creating walkable and livable communities, in which jobs are accessible by transit service or walk, and thus infill development can reduce travel delay and vehicle emissions at a regional level by moving people from suburban areas to the infill lands in urban areas. However, infill development may generate more traffic and vehicle emissions in those infill sites and surrounding areas due to higher population density. Pervious studies show that vehicle emissions are associated with adverse health effects. This paper reviewed the definition, benefit and challenges of infill development in a systematic way, and proposed a framework to quantify the health impacts of air pollution attributable to changes of traffic caused by infill development. This framework integrates traffic simulation, vehicle emissions models, roadway dispersion models, exposure assessment and risk assessment, and includes five components: (1) defining linkages between infill development and transportation planning; (2) identifying traffic activity information through simulation for case studies; (3) evaluating dispersion of vehicle emissions for different infill development patterns by linking emission models with roadway dispersion models; (4) quantifying public health effects of infill development by conducting exposure and risk assessments; and (5) recommending warrants for buffer zones. This framework will improve the understanding of the impacts of infill development, and inform decision makers to prepare suitable buffer zones to eliminate their negative impacts on environment and public health.