Developing Participatory Analytics Techniques to Inform the Prioritization of Cycling Infrastructure

The planning of bicycle infrastructure across our cities remains is a complex task involving many key stakeholders including the community, who traditionally have had limited involvement in the planning process. This research develops an interactive bicycle prioritisation index tool which includes participatory spatial and textual citizen feedback. The research involves three components. Firstly, a survey of current cyclists in Sydney, their current level of participation, priorities in investment in cycling, and preferred locations for cycling infrastructure. Secondly, it documents the development of an interactive digital bicycle planning tool which is informed through citizen feedback. Thirdly, it evaluates the approach in conversation with potential end-users, including government, planning practitioners, and advocacy group members. The research proposes the combination of multiple passive and active data traces with end-user evaluation to legitimise the citizen co-design of bicycle investment prioritisation initiatives. A case study approach has been taken, focusing on the city of Sydney, Australia. The bicycle planning support system can be used by cities when engaging in cycle prioritisation initiatives, particularly with a focus on integrating citizen feedback and navigating new and complex data landscapes introduced through recent, passively collected big data sets.

Integrated Decision Support System for Pluvial Flood-Resilient Spatial Planning in Urban Areas

Flood-resilient spatial planning in urban areas involves designing and implementing structural and nonstructural measures. For the latter, urban planners apply a precautionary principle, which is normally not grounded in the actual performance of the urban drainage system (UDS). This approach, however, fails during weather extremes with heavy precipitation. This paper presents a new concept for reducing pluvial flood risks in the urban planning process. The novelty of the developed planning support system named Extreme Weather Layer (EWL) is that it creates dynamic interlinkages between land developments, the performance of UDS, and other factors that contribute to flood risk. The EWL is built on the digital twin of the existing UDS and delivers an easy-to-use concept, where the end user can analyze hydraulic modelling results interlinked with climate scenarios using the GIS platform. This allows planning specialists to consider land use and soil types in the urban environment to simulate the response of the storm water system and the catchments to different rainfall events. This proposed approach was piloted in Haapsalu (Estonia) and Söderhamn (Sweden). The resulting planning support system, which performs as a set of layers within municipalities’ GIS, allows decision makers to understand and predict the impact of various spatial planning decisions on the pluvial flood risk.

Application of the new Swedish planning support system Citylab to a Chinese urban case

PurposeThe purpose of this paper we present a case study where the Swedish planning support system Citylab is applied to a Chinese case in Changzhou's Tianning District.Design/methodology/approachChina's planning system is a vertical system based on policy development on the national level, policies which are to be implemented on local level. There is a gap between the ambitious central policies and the implementations on local levels. China is now exporting its planning model to other developing countries which makes it urgent to show examples of other strategies including more horizontal planning involving the public. The planning system in Sweden is based on a much more horizontal process. Therefore, the authors try to learn from Sweden's vertical planning system in the urban development environment of China.FindingsA key message for policy makers in China is that systems like Citylab can play an important role in developing practical and scalable examples of more sustainable city districts. The paper concludes that a barrier for local sustainability planning in China is still lack of effective communication between local actors including the public.Originality/valueThe authors exemplified Changzhou Tianning District's practical exploration, thus proving the adapted Citylab method's practical operability. Based on the common problems faced by eco-city development in developing countries, the method framework of Citylab is applicable to other developing countries, with strong room for deduction and development.

Advanced Modelling Tools to Support Planning for Sand/Gravel Quarries

Sand and gravel quarry planning must guarantee the public interest in the procurement of raw materials while ensuring environmental sustainability. An Analyzing Planning Support System for sand and gravel quarry plan can assist decision-makers during the planning process. The proposed Analyzing PSS uses integrating geologic, economic, environmental, and geographic information to quantify raw materials and the size of quarries. This kind of tool is useful to support public authority decisions. The study provides the results of an experience conducted in the province of Brescia (NUT 3 in Northern Italy).

Developing a Participatory Planning Support System for Sustainable Regional Planning—A Problem Structuring Case Study

In this paper, we report on the application of systems engineering in initiating the synthesis of a participatory planning support system (PSS) for sustainable regional planning. The systems engineering SPADE approach is applied in a model-based fashion to define and link sustainable development goals (SDGs) to regional and urban planning policies in a co-creative multi-stakeholder environment. The approach is demonstrated through a case study from the interregional climate, land-use, and transportation planning process (PAKT) in the Ålesund region in Norway. The work was performed using focus groups with planning stakeholders over a series of workshops to analyze, design, verify and validate the problem structure. Our study shows that the approach is useful for integrating and operationalizing the SDGs in a planning context. The methodology also brings clarity and structure to planning problems and provides a pedagogical frame to engage stakeholders in co-creative PSS synthesis. Further research is necessary to explore how structured elements may be exploited in PSS synthesis.

Exploring the Potential for Planning Support Systems to Bridge the Research-translation Gap Between Public Health and Urban Planning

Background: There is consensus that planning professionals need clearer guidance on the features that are likely to produce optimal community-wide health benefits. However, much of this evidence resides in academic literature and not in tools accessible to the diverse group of professionals shaping our cities. This paper explores the role of planning support systems (PSS) to facilitate the translation and application of health evidence into urban planning and design practices to create healthy, liveable communities.Methods: A review of PSS software and studies featuring a planning support system with a built environment and health impact assessment for designing and creating healthy urban areas was undertaken. Customising existing software, a health impact PSS (the Urban Health Check) was then developed and applied to a real-world planning application with an industry partner allowing for: (i) automated calculation of built environment variables; (ii) “sketch planning” functionality; and (iii) a health impact indicator that estimates the probability of walking for transport. A participatory evaluation framework evaluated the "utility", "usability", and "usefulness" of the Urban Health Check.Results: Eleven PSS software applications were identified, of which three were identified as having the capability to undertake health impact analyses. Three studies met the inclusion criteria of presenting a planning support system customised to support health impact assessment with health impacts modelled or estimated due to changes to the built environment. Evaluation results indicated the Urban Health Check PSS helped in four key areas: visualisation of how the neighbourhood would change in response to a proposed plan; understanding how a plan could benefit the community; Communicate and improve understanding health of planning and design decisions that positively impact health outcomes; engagement – allowing community members to provide direct feedback and see the immediate implications of amendments to a proposed plan. Conclusions: The use of health-impact PSS have the potential to be transformative for the translation and application of health evidence into planning policy and practice, providing those responsible for the policy and practice of designing and creating our communities with access to quantifiable, evidence-based information about how their decisions might impact community health.

An integrated land-use/transportation forecasting and planning model: A metropolitan planning support system

Over the last several decades, land-use/transport interaction models have evolved. Although these models have the potential to become primary demographic forecasting and planning vehicles in metropolitan transportation planning for most large US urban regions, some gaps and improvements must be addressed. This paper briefly discusses a newly developed and refined integrated land-use/transportation model. It also introduces innovative approaches to modeling an urban area including a variant of a geographic information system-based land-use and environmental suitability analysis, as main components in deriving development potential for a small-cell grid of the study region. This approach enables the inclusion of public and stakeholder input into the modeling process, facilitates micro-level consideration of trip generation, trip distribution, and mode-choice inside the land-use demographic model, thus furthering the integration of transportation and land use in the modeling process. Such considerations and utilization of rule-based approaches and concerns of economic development and environmental and sustainability factors help close some existing gaps of operational models designed for real world practical applications. All of these features contribute toward further improvement of these models.