TITLE:
Measuring Urban Sprawl Indices at Traffic Analysis Zone (TAZ) Level
AUTHORS:
Tahmina Khan, Michael Anderson
KEYWORDS:
Sustainability, Urban Sprawl Indices, Principal Components, Potential Sprawling Traffic Analysis Zone
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.6 No.4,
December
5,
2018
ABSTRACT: High rates of land use change causing unsustainable development have attracted
the attention of policy and planning and raised the need to understand
the factors behind it. Sprawl occurs because of the residents’ preference
to live in suburbs, low-cost auto travel, technological innovations, the aspiration
for urbanized-automobile dependent lifestyle, the disappearance of rural
agricultural land, and spatial fragmentation. Thus, it induces sustainability
challenges and leads to excessive commuting and congestion. There is a
greater necessity to quantify urban sprawl at Traffic Analysis Zone level so
that transportation and land use planners can identify potential sprawling
TAZ and can promote/develop sustainable strategies for future land use
planning. In this study, sprawling indices at TAZ level were derived with and
without incorporating centering effect and compared the scores of sprawling
TAZs in 2010 to the sprawling TAZs for 2000. The main goal was to propose
a methodology for determining potential sprawling TAZs and to identify locations
responsible for sprawl in a case study city. The results can be a substantial
input in planning and decision-making process.