Planning for sustainable land use in Sydney using GIS-based modelling

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Copyright: Yu, Ji
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Abstract
It has been over twenty years since Britton Harris introduced Planning Support Systems, although the desire to support urban planning by computer modelling dates back to the 1940s. However, attitudes from professional planners toward PSS have been rather negative, and most PSSs are limited to academic research. One reason is the “postmodern turn” in urban planning starting in the 1980s, which has questioned the applicability of purely rational models. Research in large-scale urban simulation has gradually decreased, and the Participatory Planning System approach - with web-based interfaces and mapping abilities – has become more prevalent. This study develops a large-scale PSS to present a new perspective on PSS design that takes into account the concerns of communicative planning. To understand PSS’s rise, growth and especially the bottlenecks to development, the evolutions of urban planning, Information Systems and GIS from the 1960s on are reviewed. PSS’s weakness is then compared to the parallel but earlier failure in Information Systems and urban modelling in 1970s. This study shows why planners need a PSS with the ability to simulate urban growth on a large scale, who the users of PSS should be, and thus how PSS may be incorporated into communicative planning. Through a review of modelling methodology from 1950s and thirty models, several unique design rules are introduced to develop a new PSS named Sydney Population Distribution Model (SPDM). SPDM simulates Sydney’s population growth and distribution this based on 55158 polygons, and provides multiple simulation methods, a number of adjustable variables and an integrated design within ArcGIS. Two demonstrations are presented to show SPDM’s capability. The first scenario, “Urban Density”, simulates Sydney’s growth by constraining the density at different levels. In the second scenario of “Employment Centre”, SPDM simulates the consequences of adding additional jobs to Global Arc (North Sydney, St. Leonards, Chatswood and Macquarie Park) and Regional Cities (Parramatta, Liverpool and Penrith). The outputs from two demonstrations are then connected with a carbon footprint module, showing the environmental impacts of different scenarios.
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Author(s)
Yu, Ji
Supervisor(s)
Peters, Alan
Hoon, Han
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Publication Year
2014
Resource Type
Thesis
Degree Type
PhD Doctorate
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download public version.pdf 6.42 MB Adobe Portable Document Format
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