Modeling the density variations of urban land uses with transportation network congestion

Abstract

Perhaps the single most distinctive character of urban activity that distinguishes it from rural and regional activities is the intensive use of urban land. While the nature of density variations of urban land uses and their associated land rents are well understood, there have been few operational urban models that explicitly address the density variations of land uses. The paper presents a combined land use-transportation model, in which transportation congestion costs on networks of various transportation modes are simultaneously determined with the efficient intensity level of land uses. The procedure uses a nonlinear programming approach within the context of a multicommodity flow/input-output model.