SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT FORECASTING AND APPRAISAL

Abstract

Achieving urban land use and transport systems that are sustainable in the long run poses a challenging problem to decision makers and planners. The Fifth Framework EU project PROSPECTS was aimed at providing the guidance cities need to tackle this challenge. The main output of PROSPECTS consists of three guidebooks, a Decision Makers Guidebook, a Methodological Guidebook and a Policy Guidebook. The guidance was tested, in case studies on real cities, by the partners of the project. This thesis reports on one such case study carried out in Stockholm. The thesis consists of four parts. The first part includes a summary of the guidance, but also some context and general background of the models and methods used. The intention is for the thesis to be self-contained, but to be brief on things that are readily available in the guidebooks. The main concepts are introduced, in particular a set of objectives that forms the basis for PROSPECTS appraisal of sustainability. Some of the theoretical foundations of the methods and models used are also outlined. The second part contains the case study. The PROSPECTS approach is based on indicators measuring how well a strategy fulfills the set of objectives that describe sustainability. In order to do that, it is necessary to use models to predict the impact of a strategy. Two existing models, SAMPERS and IMREL, were integrated specially for the Stockholm case study. PROSPECTS also suggests an appraisal framework to help in the decision process. The implementation of that framework is described, together with how an objective function is formed as a tool to rank strategies with respect to objectives. Using an objective function opens up the possibility of using formal optimisation to generate suitable strategies to test. In this thesis a Response Surface Method was used to optimise the sustainability objective function. Part III describes the estimation and calibration carried out as part of the development of the integrated modelling package. The fourth part provides some general experiences and also suggests some ideas for future research. (A)

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