University of Twente Student Theses
Determining the Relationship between Urban Form Dynamics and Transport
Gishe, Ahmed (2010) Determining the Relationship between Urban Form Dynamics and Transport.
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| Abstract: | In modern cities the issue of using resources on a sustainable basis, and limiting environmental pollution, is one of the main concerns of planners, engineers and policy makers. The transport system, being an integral part of the urban environment, plays a large role in both energy consumption and in emission of pollution in the form of noxious gasses. These negative impacts have galvanized researchers, authorities, and planners into looking for a way of providing efficient transport while minimizing negative impacts. One of the key reduction mechanisms currently featured is to reduce car dependency and enhance both mass transit and non motorized means of transport. An understanding of the factors that affect transport in the first place is paramount to effective creative of such positive change. Urban form of a city is considered to be one of the main factors in this study, and one where the relationship with transport is poorly understood. The objective of this research is to model urban form and determine its effect on transport, and particularly mode choice, in Ahmadabad, India. There are numerous indicators of urban form available. However, the impact of development density on transport mode choice is rarely investigated in developing nations, and hence is utilized for this research. The concept that the density of a city is not uniform across the entire area and instead decreases with distance from the city centres was adopted and modelled on the AB-Metronamica modelling platform. Using empirical data, the correlation between the density of activities (residential, commercial, institutional and industrial), distance from the city centre, income and transport mode choice have been analysed. The correlation factors and densities of activities simulated in AB-Metronamica were then used to compute the probability of particular of mode choices. Home based trip generation was calculated considering all the activities and then multiplied with the mode choice probability to compute the likely number of trips made by each mode. Further, the number of cars and buses was calculated based on the average number of passengers they carry. Finally, using emission factors the total amount of emissions was calculated and analysed to identify which urban form is more susceptible to transport induced pollution. AB-Metronamica is a promising modelling platform for urban form modelling using activity simulation. It can produce a result which is much closer to reality than other approaches, with some improvement from incorporation of a multilayer cellular automata model and development of an algorithm that enables the model to allocate activities according to the potentials of cells at the start of the model rather than a uniform distribution. One of the model’s very important aspects is its ability to model multi-nucleated cities such as Ahmedabad by introducing CBDs and access points. The impact of change in urban form is observed to affect transport, although other factors, such as socio-economic factors, also need to be considered. Beside increment in trip ii generation, high density areas tend to favour public transport more than car dependency, although this has to be substantiated by further studies using all relevant data which are as precise and detailed as possible since autocorrelation of urban variables may lead to wrong conclusions. Key words: Urban form, urban dynamics, Density gradient, Transport system, urban form effect on transport system, Modelling, AB-Metronamica, Activity distribution |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | ITC: Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation |
| Programme: | Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation MSc (75014) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/90754 |
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