Large Residential Areas Research Articles

Assigning Traffic Over Essentially-Least-Cost Paths

The concept of a least-cost path is generalized. The simplest of all traffic assignment models assumes that all trip makers from a single origin-destination (O-D) pair take a single path, for example, the minimum cost path or the equilibrium path. However, in many applications, it is observed that trips from a single O-D do not all take the same path. It is not difficult to imagine commuters from a large residential area using different routes to travel to a common workplace simply because each has a different disutility function. In reality no two routes have exactly the same cost; however, when modeled deterministically as network graphs, these graphs invariably have O-Ds with degenerate (multiple) shortest paths. The ability to measure the best route should also be seriously questioned. Given the level of uncertainty that exists in any link attribute, the variance of the accumulated uncertainty of that attribute over any given route can easily be such as to make many routes statistically indistinguis...

Health Effects of Volcanic Ash: A Repeat Study

The Mount Sakurajima volcano in Kyushu, Japan, is proximal to a large residential area, and it emits an enormous amount of volcanic ash during frequent eruptions. In our previous study, we investigated, for the first time, respiratory effects of chronic exposure to volcanic ash. The study demonstrated a low prevalence of respiratory symptoms, even in the area of highest exposure; only a slight excess prevalence of symptoms appeared to be associated with exposure to volcanic ash. To confirm the findings of our previous study, the prevalence study of chronic respiratory symptoms for residents was repeated in Kanoya and Tashiro, which are located 25 and 50 km, respectively, from the crater of Mt. Sakurajima. The concentration of suspended particulate matter in Kanoya frequently exceeded the national environmental quality standards and, during summer and winter, was 2-3 times higher than that found in Tashiro. Women who were 30-59 y of age and who had resided in Kanoya or Tashiro for more than 3 y completed a modified ATS-DLD questionnaire. The prevalence of nonspecific respiratory disease was low, i.e., 6.5% in Kanoya and 6.2% in Tashiro; similar prevalences were found in women who had never smoked. When we restricted the analysis to individuals without a history of occupational exposure to dusts and who had no exposure to passive smoking, there was a slightly higher prevalence of nonspecific respiratory disease in Kanoya than Tashiro, but the difference was not significant. Eye symptoms were equally prevalent in the two areas.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Municipal Code Enforcement and Urban Redevelopment: Private Decisions and Public Policy in an American city

Over the past three decades urban redevelopment projects in the United States have typically involved working partnerships between public officials and the business community. This article presents the results of a case study showing how one American city cooperated with private investors to redevelop a large residential area close to its central business district. Through the use of strategic code enforcement and a financial scheme which removed market risks for the developers, the city in question made it possible for the development plan to succeed. The data are examined within the framework of an emerging neo Marxist literature on urban land use. The policy implications of the findings are discussed and analyzed.

Sharing Space: Ray Michal at City Stage

Michal: What I’m trying to do at City Stage is provide an exciting, involving theatre experience for downtown, urban audiences. I think of City Stage as a kind of community theatre for the downtown area. We have such a large residential area in the West End adjacent to our location just off Robson Street; I like to think of the theatre serving that community. Now, mind you, we get a lot of visitors, especially in the summer when the tourist traffic is pretty heavy, so the community is quite an eclectic one. But I find that my energy really comes from the immediate community that I work in, just walking down Robson Street and seeing the office workers that are in this part of the city every day. It’s really for those people that the theatre is here.

Canberra after the Five-year Plan (1959-4964)

In 1959, National Capital Development Commission of Canberra made a Five-year Plan (1959-1964) to construct the city as the capital, the garden city with a safe and efficient traffic and transportation system. After the Five-year Plan, Canberra has an artificial lake which divides the city into northern and the southern districts. To the north of the city, several new residential districts called “neighbourhood” are built to absorb the increasing population. Each “neighbourhood” accommodates approximately 5, 000 people around a primary school and other facilities and is connected to the central facilities by arterial roads. Now, estimating the population growth at a rate of ten thousand peopole per a year, the Commission develops two large residential areas in the northwest and the southwest sides of the city.