Development of an urban land change model with transportation development

Keywords: Urban growth, urban growth modeling, coevolution, transportation, road development, road growth, scenarios
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Globally rapid urbanization, economic growth and infrastructure development are urging for a more extensive evaluation of urban areas to better understand the interaction between different components of any urban system. Urban growth and infrastructure development, especially road network growth, are two coevolving processes, and to understand long-term urban growth dynamics, it is crucial to model codependent relationship between these two processes. Hence, in this study, we forecasted the amount and patterns of urban growth and road transportation network through 2050 based upon an interactive urban land change model that is capable of capturing the feedback between urban land and road network development. While this proposed model forecasts up to 1.2 times new urban areas under different scenarios relative to the base year of 2015, traditional models with no road length consideration forecasted between 1.5-1.7 times higher urban areas in 2050. We also forecasted the updated road network pattern, which increases most extensively in currently underdeveloped areas. The overall output from this codependent modeling process will inform the updated road network pattern related to the forecasted urban area. This approach enables us to capture the influence of the ongoing large-scale transportation infrastructure development projects on urban growth at large regional levels, which will in turn allow for more realistic assessments of the impacts of these projects on the environment.