Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

In this paper we describe the developments of European building regulatory systems and place them within the context of general trends in the regulatory sciences, particularly with reference to Europeanisation studies. Within the regulatory sciences there is broad consensus about the trend towards deregulation and privatisation in recent decades. Studies conducted under the rubric of ‘Europeanisation’ analyse the effects of European policies on the policy frameworks of the member states in more detail. Are the systems converging or diverging? Although the history of this kind of research is short, most authors agree that European policies have had a profound impact on the policies of the member states, but that this impact has not been uniform. In this paper, we analyse privatisation and deregulation trends within the building regulatory systems of eight European countries, and we consider whether the systems appear to be converging or diverging. We focus on three elements: the scope of the technical requirements, the building-permit procedures and the division of control and inspection responsibilities. The analyses reveal no evidence that the scope of technical requirements in European countries is diminishing. Through its directives, the European Union exercises a convergent influence on the contents, scope, and formulation of these technical requirements. In addition, all member countries are taking steps to streamline their administrative procedures. The importance of the role played by private organisations in checking and controlling regulations is increasing across the board. Although they differ in pace and emphasis, these administrative deregulation and privatisation trends exhibit a number of parallel developments.

In this paper we introduce a subshape matching technique for shapes composed of curved lines that lie in a plane. An interpreter with this ability allows for the practical implementation of general shape grammars as well as opening the door for new applications of shape grammars. This method for matching shapes consisting of curved lines is outlined and examples are shown. The emergent properties of shape grammars are also explored and considered using the new method for shape interpretation.

Stereo panoramic virtual reality (VR) may represent another new technology with which to collect travel diaries. The potential value of VR-based systems is that respondents may reexperience and reenact their behaviour. The actual experience and visual trigger may lead to more valid data. To test this hypothesis the validity of a paper-and-pencil diary was compared with a stereo panoramic navigation application against actual observations of activity-travel sequences of pedestrians who were traced by observers. The results of this validation study support the hypothesis for most facets of activity-travel diaries, except for the aspect of duration, which generated more mixed results.

The role of race versus class in shaping residential segregation patterns has been a contentious issue in segregation studies for decades. Despite the voluminous, interdisciplinary literature, scholars have reported conflicting evidence on the role of race versus class in residential segregations. We attribute the current inconclusive literature partially to the failure to consider scale explicitly in residential segregation measures, and partially to the growing complexity of a multiethnic melting pot in most cities in the United States. Inspired by new metrics employed by landscape ecologists to measure landscape heterogeneity, residential segregation is reconceived as a scale-dependent social phenomenon in this paper. We also present an alternative to existing structural or spatial segregation measures, considered as less efficient because most of the existing indices measure only a few dimensions of segregation at a single scale. We have developed a multiscale, lacunarity-based segregation measure, and have used it to examine the role of race versus class in residential segregation patterns in Houston, Texas. Using census-tract-level data from 1980 to 2000, we found that race is still the most important factor in explaining residential segregation despite the overall decline of segregation by both income and race. It was also found that the changing segregation patterns over time are contingent upon the scale as well as the race or income group considered.

Failure to implement plans has long been considered a significant barrier to effective planning. We examine two conceptions of success in plan implementation (conformance and performance), the effects of the implementation practices of planning agencies, and the capacity of agencies and permit applicants to bring about success. A key lesson from our New-Zealand-based evaluation is that implementation is somewhat weak. Another key point is that, if implementation is defined and measured in terms of conformance, plans and planners have an important influence on implementation success. Alternatively, if implementation is defined and measured in terms of performance, plans and planners are less influential in implementation. These lessons have broad implications for the theory and practice of plan implementation.

Local street systems comprise networks of collectors and alleys in a block bounded by arterials. In this study we develop a model for analyzing the spacing design of local streets. The model is designed as a multiobjective grey integer programming approach, which considers three objectives: accessibility, mobility, and safety. Constraints include travel demand, the passage of emergency vehicles, the evacuation of people, the influence of noise on residents, and dimension regulation of the architectural base. Because planning work is filled with uncertainties, the model parameters and decision variables are both grey numbers, which represent possible ranges rather than crisp values. Additionally, in this study we develop the grey integer TOPSIS approach for solving the developed model and other multiobjective grey integer programming models. A mixed-use block in the new town Dan-hai is explored as a case study to verify the applicability of the model to practical work. The case study is also used to analyze the influences of traffic-calming measures on spacing design in order to identify model characteristics.

The objective of this paper is to present the development of quantitative, spatially explicit, and alternative scenarios of future urban land use in Europe. The scenario-construction methodology is based on three steps: (1) an interpretation of four global-scale storylines describing in qualitative terms alternative urban-development pathways, (2) the development and application of a simple statistical model to estimate the future demand for urban land, and (3) the development of rules to allocate this urban demand geographically through the consideration of land-use planning goals. The qualitative part of the analysis is based on an interpretation of the four storylines of the Special Report on Emission Scenarios by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This interpretation describes the principal driving forces that are specific to the European region and to the urban sector on the basis of the theoretical principles of urban economy. The urban-demand model includes two driving forces: (a) the population, representing demographic trends and the demand for housing; and (b) the gross domestic product, reflecting the economic level and dynamism. A further three variables are used as drivers of spatial patterns: (c) accessibility to the transport network; (d) the degree of restriction arising from land-use planning policy, and (e) the relative attractiveness (in terms of residential-location choice) of small, medium, and large cities. Thus, the urban-land-use change model is based on a multilevel analysis, which integrates theory and empirical evidence. The results are original urban-land-use maps of Europe for each of the four scenarios on the basis of a 10′ (latitude and longitude) geographic grid. The comparison of these alternative views of the future and the transparency of the development of these views provide a rich and consistent method for understanding the relationships between driving forces, their intensity, and their consequence for geographic space. Scenario analysis is a useful tool to test incentives, measures, or planning regulations according to different policy objectives.