National Center for Smart Growth

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21472

The National Center for Smart Growth (NCSG) works to advance the notion that research, collaboration, engagement and thoughtful policy development hold the key to a smarter and more sustainable approach to urban and regional development. NCSG is based at the University of Maryland, College Park, housed under the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, with support from the College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, the A. James Clark School of Engineering, the School of Public Policy, and the Office of the Provost.

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Author: search.filters.author.Knaap, GerritSubject: search.filters.subject.Transportation

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Internally Connected, No Commercial, With a Touch of Open Space: The Neighborhoods of New Homes in the Portland Metropolitan Area
    (2004) Song, Yan; Knaap, Gerrit
    For many years, neighborhoods have been classified as either “suburban” or “traditional.” But new homes today are built in many different types of neighborhoods with many different design features. In this paper, we develop a quantitative method for classifying the neighborhoods of new homes in the Portland metropolitan area. We proceed in three steps. First we measure urban form attributes of neighborhoods around newly developed homes. We then use factor analysis to identify a small set of factors that capture essential differences in urban form. Finally we use cluster analysis on these factor scores to identify distinctly different neighborhood types. Applying these methods to neighborhoods around new single family homes in the metropolitan Portland, Oregon, we are able to identify eight factors of urban form and six neighborhood types. We then show that most new single family homes in metropolitan Portland are built in new suburban neighborhoods but a substantial portion is occurring in traditional urban neighborhoods.
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    A functional integrated land use-transportation model for analyzing transportation impacts in the Maryland-Washington, DC Region
    (2011) Mishra, Sabyasachee; Ye, Xin; Ducca, Fred; Knaap, Gerrit
    The Maryland-Washington, DC region has been experiencing significant land-use changes and changes in local and regional travel patterns due to increasing growth and sprawl. The region’s highway and transit networks regularly experience severe congestion levels. Before proceeding with plans to build new transportation infrastructure to address this expanding demand for travel, a critical question is how future land use will affect the regional transportation system. This article investigates how an integrated land-use and transportation model can address this question. A base year and two horizon-year land use-transport scenarios are analyzed. The horizon-year scenarios are: (1) business as usual (BAU) and (2) high gasoline prices (HGP). The scenarios developed through the land-use model are derived from a three-stage top-down approach: (a) at the state level, (b) at the county level, and (c) at the statewide modeling zone (SMZ) level that reflects economic impacts on the region. The transportation model, the Maryland Statewide Transport Model (MSTM), is an integrated land use-transportation model, capable of reflecting development and travel patterns in the region. The model includes all of Maryland, Washington, DC, and Delaware, and portions of southern Pennsylvania, northern Virginia, New Jersey, and West Virginia. The neighboring states are included to reflect the entering, exiting, and through trips in the region. The MSTM is a four-step travel-demand model with input provided by the alternative land-use scenarios, designed to produce link-level assignment results for four daily time periods, nineteen trip purposes, and eleven modes of travel. This article presents preliminary results of the land use-transportation model. The long-distance passenger and commodity-travel models are at the development stage and are not included in the results. The analyses of the land use-transport scenarios reveal insights to the region’s travel patterns in terms of the congestion level and the shift of travel as per land-use changes. The model is a useful tool for analyzing future land-use and transportation impacts in the region.
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    The Transportation-Land Use Policy Connection
    (2005) Knaap, Gerrit; Song, Yan
    In this paper, we explore the transportation-land use policy connection. More specifically, we consider the question: can land use policy be used to alter transportation behavior? The answer is of some importance. If the answer is yes, then there is hope that land use policies can be designed and implemented that will bring some relief to the gridlock and complex transportation problems facing US metropolitan areas. This is the underlying assumption behind most smart growth policy reforms. If the answer is no, then land use policy may still be important, but is not likely to play an important role in resolving transportation issues. We proceed as follows. First we offer a schematic that identifies necessary conditions for land use policy to play a role in addressing transportation issues. Specially,we argue that for land use policy to play an effective role, three conditions must hold. First, land use must be able to alter transportation behavior. Second, transportation infrastructure must not fully determine land use. Third, the condition on which we consider most extensively, land use policy must significantly and constructively affect land use. After presenting the schematic, we consider the evidence on each of these conditions. Based on our review of the evidence, we conclude that land use policy can play an effective role in addressing transportation issues, but that the role is likely to be small, often counter productive, and most effective at the neighborhood scale.
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    Even Smarter Growth? Land Use, Transportation, and Greenhouse Gas in Maryland
    (2014) Knaap, Gerrit; Welch, Timothy; Avin, Uri; Ducca, Fred; Mishra, Sabyasachee; Cui, Yuchen; Erdogan, Sevgi
    Urban form studies have generally used regional density vs. sprawl land use scenarios to assess travel behavior outcomes. The more nuanced but nonetheless important allocation of jobs and housing and their relationship to each other as a factor in travel behavior has received much less attention. That relationship is explored in this statewide urban form study for Maryland. This is a state where county land use has a long tradition of growth management, but one whose regional and statewide implications have not been evaluated. How does a continuation of the County level smart growth regime play out statewide compared to other scenarios of job and housing distribution that are driven by higher driving costs or transit oriented development goals or local zoning rather than local policy-driven projections? Answers are provided through the application of a statewide travel demand model, the Maryland Statewide Transportation Model (MSTM). The findings suggest that the debate should move beyond walkability, density and compact growth and towards a more productive dialog about how we organize whole cities and regions.
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    Retail Location and Transit: An Econometric Examination of Retail Location in Prince George’s and Montgomery County, Maryland
    (2014) Knaap, Elijah; Knaap, Gerrit; Ma, Ting
    Transit oriented development (TOD) is a widely accepted policy objective of many jurisdictions in the United States. There is both anecdotal and empirical evidence to suggest that the vitality of TODs and the transit boardings from any TOD depends significantly on the extent of retail development in the transit station area. We focus in this paper, on the determinants of retail location in two counties, Montgomery County and Prince George’s County, Maryland, with a particular focus on the influence of proximity to rail transit stations. We used data from two counties in the Washington DC suburbs to construct measures of transit and retail accessibility and constructed an econometric model to estimate the relationship between urban contextual factors and retail firm locations. The results from our analysis provide empirical support for the notion that retail firms are attracted to locations with high levels of transit accessibility. By extension, these findings suggest that investments in transit—particularly fixed rail transit—may be an effective method for stimulating retail development in metropolitan areas.
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    Exploring Alternative Futures Using a Spatially Explicit Econometric Model
    (2008) Kaza, Nikhil; Knaap, Gerrit; Meade, Douglas
    This paper illustrates the application of various forecasting methodologies in constructing multiple scenarios for the state of Maryland using Long term Inter Industry Forecasting Tool that tracks inter-industry outputs at a macro scale, and State Employment Model that disaggregates these outputs to the states. We then use accessibility, land availability and observed relationships of employment categories to distribute employment at a county level. In this paper, we identify the possible advantages and pitfalls of using large scale economic models to drive employment forecasts at the county level. This framework allows for simulating the implications of macroeconomic scenarios such as changes in exchange rates and unemployment levels, as well as local land use and transportation policies on local employment and demographics. In particular, we focus on two scenarios as test cases both of which involve very different ideas about how future might unfold and their effects on land use and transportation policy prescriptions. One of the scenarios involves, among others, rises in health care spending over the next few years and the other involves increases in energy prices. As will be shown, they have different spatial effects and suggest different policy actions on the part of various governments.