Edited by Gordon Wilmsmeier and Jason Monios
Marcela A. Munizaga
After many years of data scarcity in transportation-related sciences, we have now entered the era of big data. Large amounts of data are available from GPS devices, mobile phone traces, payment transactions, social media, and other sources. The opportunities that this new availability presents are enormous. High-quality data is available at very low or negligible cost. These data can be used to develop new tools, to explore and understand travel behavior and to formulate new policies. However, the challenges are also big: the access to the data is not guaranteed, confidentiality has to be considered, the capacity of processing and enriching these databases has to be developed, and only then will they become really useful for decision-making and for the definition of public policies. This chapter presents an overview of the current state of play, and discusses the future perspectives, focusing on the challenges of building new predictive models.
Edited by John Stanley and David A. Hensher
Transit Oriented Development and Sustainable Cities
Economics, Community and Methods
Edited by Richard D. Knowles and Fiona Ferbrache
John Stanley, Janet Stanley and Roslynne Hansen
The way the spatial arrangement of land use and transport initiatives in a city can promote urban productivity growth has become a greater planning focus in recent years, building on work on ‘wider economic benefits’. The major part of this chapter looks at such macro-economic underpinnings of strategic urban land use transport planning and suggests how growing spatial understanding of such matters can be used to support urban productivity growth and the sharing of the benefits of this growth more widely among residents of the city. It does this by presenting detailed case study material from Melbourne and London. Similar broad structural economic influences are operating in both cities and the broad land use transport policy directions chosen by each have much in common. They differ, however, with respect to the role that knowledge clusters are being asked to play outside the central city. Planners need to be cognisant of how land use development directions can best play a supportive role in the circumstances of their particular city. The second part of the chapter looks at congestion costs, as an important micro-economic problem that has land use transport policy directions. The macro and micro parts are brought together in a discussion about land use transport policy and planning directions to enhance the external (productivity) benefits of a city and reduce various ‘external costs’.
John Stanley, Janet Stanley and Roslynne Hansen
Strategic long-term land use transport plans need to be complemented by implementation plans, which explain how projects and programmes of works will be financed and funded. With substantial sums available internationally for the financing of good infrastructure projects, funding is generally seen as a more significant barrier to implementing long-term land use transport plans. This chapter, therefore, focuses on funding, which includes government funding, funding from service users and funding from other service beneficiaries, requiring a focus on identifying and valuing potential benefits and the associated beneficiaries. It approaches the topic primarily by considering how urban public transport services might be funded, in a wider setting in which cities commonly lack the autonomy to be financially independent. It looks at how public transport is funded in North American and Australian cities, identifies principles to help choose between alternative possible funding measures, elaborates a range of such measures and suggests how they might be bundled into funding packages. This bundling is illustrated for two scenarios: the first is where pricing measures are in place to ensure that road (car) users meet the various external costs associated with their travel choices, through marginal social cost pricing of road use; the second assumes a lack of such pricing of road (car) use.
John Stanley, Janet Stanley and Roslynne Hansen
A broader scope for integrated land use transport planning increases the complexity of associated governance requirements, an area that good cities manage well. This chapter looks at horizontal and vertical integration and presents a number of international case studies to help inform practice. Horizontal integration seems to work best when there is a clear and unambiguous voice for the city, which also has benefits of transparency and accountability. This is easiest when there is a single local authority responsible for the city but alternative approaches are also examined, as are ways in which national/federal levels of government might engage with integrated urban land use transport planning (vertical integration). The chapter argues for devolution of more decision-making power and associated funding to neighbourhood level and points to the need for governance arrangements to support this change. Some of the proposed changes to governance arrangements would shake up the current power balance in land use transport policy and planning in some cities. Such change is likely to be more easily accomplished if the city is able to speak strongly for itself, is adequately resourced, a wide range of stakeholders is engaged in the process and all are able to operate from a position of trust. The chapter identifies some of the requirements in relation to trust.
John Stanley, Janet Stanley and Roslynne Hansen
Access to secure, comfortable and affordable housing influences a person’s health and wellbeing, sense of belonging and ability to participate in society both socially and economically. The widening gap between household incomes and the rising cost of housing to buy or rent is emerging as a key issue in many cities. This chapter explores the nature and scale of housing challenges, looking at the supply and demand aspects, the spatial patterns of locational disadvantage and inequity triggered by the cost of housing, and the role that affordable housing plays in the productivity of a city and its economic competitiveness. With cities such as London, New York, Berlin and Melbourne experiencing shortages in housing supply (including social housing), there is an urgent need for governments to implement policies and initiatives which encourage more housing being constructed close to where job agglomerations exist, with good public and active transport. Various financial models, planning mechanisms and partnership arrangements aimed at providing more housing which is affordable to low and lower middle-income households and increasing the stock of social housing are examined. Unlocking the potential of government-owned land for affordable housing and higher-density mixed-use development, and innovation in housing design and building technologies are also discussed. A key challenge for governments is how to scale-up the affordable and social housing sectors to address issues of homelessness, overcrowding and spatial inequity within our cities.