Course Description

This course will provide an overview of the nature of land use and transportation planning in the United States and why there is often thought to be "insufficient" interconnectedness between the two. The course will provide the student with an understanding of how development decisions affect transportation systems and impact travel choice and how transportation investments impact urban form. This interrelationship between transportation and land use is a growing concern in most urbanized areas with increasing traffic congestion and clean air issues. This class provides a framework for understanding land use, transportation and air quality issues and exposure to a set of tools to address where they impact one another.

We will address how land use or development decisions impact not only travel choices, but how these travel choices in turn have dramatic impacts on the environment. Along these lines we will examine how transportation investment decisions affect urban spatial structure. Several analytical approaches or models have been developed to predict how land use affects travel choice and to a lesser extent how a transportation investment impacts urban form. This class will include a review of these models and other recent approaches to integrate land use and transportation planning and project implementation.

A great deal of the controversy exists over whether or not "transit oriented / neotraditional" approaches to land use planning can be an effective means to mitigate traffic congestion and reduce vehicle emissions. However, little controversy exists over the fact that greater coordination between transportation investment and development decisions will require a vast shift in public policy objectives manifested at the local, regional, and state levels of government. Competition among jurisdictions for tax bases associated with new development often reduces the quality of projects permitted and the amount of mitigation required to reduce adverse transportation impacts. While essential for economic growth, regional travel mandates held by state agencies can often result in transportation investments that are counter to local mandates to create and sustain vibrant pedestrian-oriented mixed-use environments.

The land use-transportation relationship will be analyzed as an aggressive and proactive form of transportation demand management. Political realities and forces which disenfranchise land use and transportation policy decisions such as those mentioned above will be highlighted. The following figure provides a conceptual framework for the class -- this framework is that transportation investment and travel choices are a function of a variety of factors including land use.
 

Lecture Schedule
 

Inter-Governmental Issues

Development decisions are the province of local governments while major transportation investment decisions are most often made by regional and state agencies. This creates an inherent lack of coordination between land use decisions made by local governments and transportation investments made or funded at the regional and state level. How this separation of responsibilities affects land use and transportation decisions and the resulting urban landscape will be analyzed.
 

Lecture Topic

1 historical review of current land use practices / who makes land use decisions and on what bases

2 historical role of transportation: accessibility vs. mobility

3 the role of private and public sectors

4 federal, state, and local policies relating land use with transport

5 perspectives of local, regional, state, and federal agencies: a "conflict of visions"
 

The Impacts of Land Use on Transportation Systems and Travel Choice

This will involve a review of research that documents the manner in which specific land use actions impact travel factors. This will also include a review of criticisms that a meaningful and predictable linkage exists between land use and travel behavior. Most of this literature argues that land use itself is not an explanatory factor in travel choice but masks the affect of factors like level of service of transit or demographics. Policy implications of findings of research that relate land use actions to travel decisions will be discussed. The ability to foster non-motorized travel and better multi-modal integration will be reviewed in conjunction with various templates for transit-friendly site development practices.
 

Lecture Topic

6 land use effects on travel choice -- causal vs. relational interfaces

7 key land use and travel behavior variables -- database constructs

8 the role of urban design -- site level attributes that affect travel choice

9 findings and criticism within the literature -- the land use transportation dialectic

10 simple tools and techniques available for planners to deal with impacts of land use on transportation
 

The Impacts of Transportation Investment on Urban Form

We will compare and contrast how different transportation investments (e.g. rail vs. highway) impact metropolitan development in different ways. This will be supported with literature and case studies. Several studies were commissioned by the FTA to identify the economic development impacts of major rail systems developed in the 1970s-1980s. We will spend some time discussing specific factors that make it difficult to predict land use responses in relation to transportation investment. These factors include existing patterns of trade, development, movement of goods, and cycles of regional growth and decline.
 

Lecture Topic

11 historical role of transportation -- theoretical framework as characterized by Christhaller and Loesch

12 transportation as a shaper of settlement patterns and the science of Ekistics

13 regional impacts of highway investments on development -- case studies

14 regional impacts of transit investment on development -- case studies
 

Modeling Efforts to Link Land Use and Transportation

Several models exist that account for aspects of transportation and land use interaction. The course will review existing transportation modeling packages and modeling packages that attempt to more directly link transportation with land use. Research indicates that the arrangement of development in addition to the amount of development affects travel choices. Lack of sensitivity to detailed land use measures results in modeling (which provides the basis for transportation investments) that inaccurately predict the travel patterns that occur. In addition, land use inputs into transportation models often predetermine which transportation investments will fare the best in an alternatives analysis. This course will review the process that the Atlanta Regional Commission uses within the Regional Transportation Plan update. Limitations of current models and approaches to modeling will be discussed. Current efforts to improve modeling in this arena will be presented and critiqued.
 

Lecture Topic

15 types of models available -- a review of ISGLUTI

16 issues of data availability and requirements

17 land use within currently employed 4-step modeling process

18 interactive models

19 econometric models

20 predicting where and how much growth will occur within a zone

21 windows application: TRANUS demonstration -- Seattle Dataset

22 TRANUS -- Atlanta Dataset
23 midterm exam

The Role of Growth Management

Linkages that have been forged between local governments and regional, state, and federal agencies will be reviewed. These linkages are often referred to as external planning consistency requirements. Most of these requirements have come in the form of Growth Management legislation. This will be a review of specific applications of growth control tools and their effectiveness on travel transportation.
 

Lecture Topic

24 Growth management programs to link transportation and development

25 Transportation concurrency, LOS vs. requirement to mitigate

26 Acceptance and effect of growth management and concurrency -- case studies
 

The Role of Development Regulations

We will review the level of implementation that has occurred in certain locations where policies have been enacted to foster integrated planning for land use and transportation decisions. At the local level this means that the zoning code and development regulations need to reflect adopted policy. We will discuss why certain strategies have been more difficult to implement than others within the political contexts of different regions of the nation.
 

Lecture Topic

27 Examining for consistency between policies and regulations

28 Applying lessons learned to the Regional Transportation Planning process
29 Student Presentations