Simulation of suburban migration: driving forces, socio-economic characteristics, migration behaviour and resulting land-use patterns

Land-use transitions in metropolitan areas have a high impact on environment and appear as pressures on the inhabitants' living conitions. Tools are needed to support planning decisions to overcome or at least mitigate those pressures. Simulation models are such tools, generating land-use change scenarios that help to examine effects of planning strategies. This article introduces a model that establishes a multiagent system approach to achieve results for changes in land-use and migration patterns with high spatial accuracy. Details of suburban migration behaviour modelling are described with emphasis on the definition of socio-economic classes, on the detection of driving forces triggering suburban migration and on migration behaviour aspects with respect to those socio-economic classes. The model concept is presented as well as results of retrospective simulation runs for a 30-year time range that are compared with the observations of the simulation target year in order to examine the model's validity. Future scenario runs show different urban sprawl trends with either restricted or unlimited residential area zoning and higher versus lower target residential density regulations. A remarkable decrease of suburban sprawl can be achieved by applying the right planning measures, even if the numbers of migrating households remain the same.

Urban Development and Infrastructure Cost Modelling for Managing Urban Growth in Latin American Cities

Rapid urban growth presents considerable challenges to cities in Latin America and calls for tools and mechanisms that can help identify priority areas of work and enable integrated responses for urban sustainability, especially with regard to access and delivery of infrastructure services. The concentration of population, however, generates high demand for services. When the expansion of the supply of services is inadequate, significant deficits emerge in the coverage and quality of infrastructure and services, including housing. These problems are compounded by weak urban governance. (IDB, 2015) Thus solutions are required to secure sustainable urban development considering financing limits of cities authorities as well quality of life and environment. Infrastructure planning can either respond to urban growth providing supply by following the demand or it can pro-actively shape urban development in a resource efficient way by providing supply directing the demand. Thus appropriate infrastructure design can serve as an instrument for “soft” urban growth management. AIT (Austrian Institute of Technology) has been contracted by the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) to develop a tool (model) to simulate urban expansion triggered by infrastructure development and to estimate related infrastructure costs. The tool allows simulating different urban development scenarios based on different assumption on population behaviour and criteria triggering this behaviour. The tool called UIDS (Urban and Infrastructure Development Simulator) allows testing infrastructure networks extensions and estimates the expected infrastructure costs to assist cities in resource efficient as well as cost efficient infrastructure design. Backbone of the tool is a spatially explicit micro-simulation of urban expansion conducted through an agent-based model (ABM) as well as AIT’s MASGISmo simulation platform making use of the RePastJ environment for ABM modeling and R-statistics as well as a PostgreSQL/PostGis database and a GeoServer for Web Map Services (WMS). Single agents representing households of different socioeconomic classes trigger land cover and land use change within an area by moving to certain places. To model dwelling suitability for the agent classes the urban-region landscape is described through attractiveness layers representing different characteristics increasing (or decreasing) the suitability of potential urban expansion areas. The additional infrastructure costs for road network, water- and sanitation network, electricity and gas network, are estimated based on costs per unit (e.g. km pipeline, area covered etc.) and the related supply ratio. Based on the new dwelling allocations the infrastructure costs related to water and sanitation, transportation, and energy are calculated as distribution and connection costs and aggregated to total costs for the city, which are compared between different urban development scenarios

Urban Development Simulator: An interactive decision support tool for urban planners enabling citizen’s participation.

The Urban Development Simulator is currently under development within the FP7 EU project urbanAPI (2011-2014). The simulation tool is developed for the city of Ruse in remote northern Bulgaria at the Romanian border as a support for the local urban planners and politicians to evaluate high level planning decisions defined as use cases. The tool is developed as generic simulation framework, thus the framework can be applied for other cities too, to generate tailor-made urban planning support tools, if the necessary geospatial data about future planning scenarios and related statistical data describing the socio-economic state and future expectations are available. The tool enables urban planners to estimate the impact of different urban development scenarios and visualises spatial changes through dynamic GIS maps depicting the results of the simulations. It is based on the analysis of geospatial data and uses an Agent-based modelling approach to simulate the development in the city. While other urban development simulation tools usually model urban growth in the urban fringe, the Urban Development Simulator concentrates on intra-urban development, as the City of Ruse turns out as a shrinking city which is starting to recover since the last years – reorganizing the intra-urban structure. The tool has a complex user interface and a web interfaces to interact with the local citizens. Thus different planning scenarios and their effects can be visualized (also in 3D) via the web interface and the opinion of the local residents can be involved into the planning decisions by voting for selected planning decisions as preference of the citizens. The spatial pattern of the preferences serves as an input for the parameterization of the Agent-based model to simulate the development trends within the different areas of the city. Scenarios can be simulated what would be, if the urban planners would follow the citizens’ preferences. This enables the decision makers to adapt their urban development plans by considering the preferences of the citizens. Effects on e.g. the final energy demand and CO2 emissions for residential buildings are further calculated for the different development scenarios. The model runs as a Java web-start application and is hosted on a server at the AIT with remote access for the Ruse users. For the model development the simulation platform MASGISmo (Multimethod Agent-based (ABM) System dynamics (SD), GIS modelling platform) has been applied, a framework originally developed during several prior projects to combine a bottom up agent-based simulation method (ABM) with a top down – system dynamics (SD) approach. This platform is programmed in Java connected to several external tools as a PostgreSQL (PostGIS) database, Vensim a (SD) tool and uses RepastJ as core ABM tool. For the purpose of the Urban Development Simulator the GIS capability of the platform was enhanced with more powerful GIS features, thus new planning scenarios can directly be introduced within the tool by the urban planners. The paper will concentrate on the description of the structure of the Urban Development Simulator, further more explain the participatory citizen’s integration

Andrea Doria

Andrea Doria war eine Schlüsselpersönlichkeit der ligurischen und europäischen Geschichte der ersten Hälfte des Cinquecento und einer der mächtigsten italienischen Renaissancefürsten seiner Zeit. Die vorliegende Studie beleuchtet die künstlerischen Strategien, mit denen er gemäß den ungeschriebenen Gesetzen der Renaissancegesellschaft einen diesem Status angemessenen Prunk entfaltete. Die Abhandlung beginnt mit der Erörterung des ikonographischen Ausstattungsprogrammes des Palazzo vor den Mauern Genuas, den der Fürst durch den Raffael-Schüler Perino del Vaga im bis dahin in Ligurien unbekannten Stil der Hochrenaissance dekorieren ließ. Es folgt die Besprechung des Umbaus der dorianischen Familienkirche San Matteo, und danach die Vorstellung von Medaillen und Plaketten mit dem Abbild des Principe. Breiter Raum wird in der Folge den erhaltenen Porträtgemälden, insbesondere von Sebastiano del Piombo und Agnolo Bronzino, gewidmet. Die Untersuchung schließt mit der Behandlung der von der Republik Genua beauftragten überlebensgroßen Ehrenstatue für Andrea Doria. Die Arbeit geht auch der Frage nach, ob der Principe einen fürstlichen Hof („corte“) unterhielt. Andrea Doria war Fürst von Melfi und Tursi in Süditalien, hatte aber in Genua keinen territorialen Herrschaftsanspruch. Seine Machtstellung als de facto-Signore der Hafenstadt beruhte ausschließlich auf seiner persönlichen Vermittlerrolle als Verbündeter Karls V. und Garant der Loyalität Genuas sowie ihrer republikanischen Freiheit. Zur Gesamtheit eines Hofes gehören im Wesentlichen ein Herrschaftsgebiet, eine prunkvolle, wehrhafte Residenz im Stadtzentrum als unübersehbarer Mittelpunkt der Herrschaftsmacht, eine Patronatskirche mit imposanter Grablege, ein Hofstaat von Verwaltungsbeamten, Bedienten, Höflingen, Künstlern und humanistisch gebildeten Intellektuellen, sowie Rituale, die den herausgehobenen Stand des Herrschers durch sichtbare Auszeichnungen wie Huldigungsfestzüge, Orden, Titel und Pfründe markieren. Der Souverän seinerseits hatte seine gesellschaftliche Vorrangstellung durch verschwenderische Großzügigkeit und prächtige Selbstrepräsentation mit den Mitteln der Kunst sinnfällig zur Schau zu stellen. Das dorianische Anwesen zeigt eine Mischform von Palazzo, Villa suburbana und Portikusvilla am Meer und entspricht nach Ausmaß, Form und Lage einer ländlichen Fürsten-Residenz. Erst die prunkvolle Innenausstattung machte das Gebäude zur fürstlichen Hochrenaissance-Villa im Stil der römisch-florentinischen „maniera“. Die Ikonographie der Freskengemälde war unter symbolischem Rückbezug auf das republikanische Rom voll auf die Verherrlichung des Palasteigners als friedensbringender „neuer Augustus“ ausgerichtet, der Genua als „neuem Rom“ Frieden, Wohlstand und ein Goldenes Zeitalter sicherte. Eine inhaltliche Orientierung der kostspieligen Ausstattung auf Karl V. für dessen nur seltene Besuche ist dagegen wenig wahrscheinlich. Die repräsentative Bautätigkeit des Doria zur Wahrung einer sichtbaren, ewigen „memoria“ umschloss auch die Familienkirche San Matteo, die er nach dem avanciertesten Stand der Renaissancearchitektur umgestalten ließ. Andrea Doria verfügte über keinen Beamtenapparat zur Verfolgung von Staatsgeschäften, beschäftigte jedoch schreibgewandte Mitarbeiter und Sekretäre. In seinem Dienst standen berühmte Künstler wie Perino del Vaga, der für die kostbaren Textilien der Residenz verantwortliche Nicola Valentini, sowie der bedeutende Bildhauer Montorsoli und weitere namhafte Meister wie Beccafumi, Pordenone, Cosini und andere. Daneben dürfte sich auch ein intellektueller Kreis von Humanisten um die Residenz gebildet haben, die ein gewichtiger finanzieller wie geistiger Anziehungspunkt war. In seiner bildlichen Selbstdarstellung hielt sich der Fürst in auffälliger Weise zurück, vermutlich um nicht andere ligurische Adelsgeschlechter durch auffälligen Personenkult zu antagonisieren: die bedeutendsten Porträts stammen von anderen Kommittenten, und bei den wenigen anderen erhaltenen Bildnissen (wie auch bei den Medaillen und Plaketten mit Porträtdarstellungen, z. B. von Leone Leoni) ist ungewiss, ob sie vom Principe selbst beauftragt wurden. Die ihm von Genua gewidmete kolossale Ehrenstatue kam nicht auf sein erkennbares Betreiben zustande. Wollte Andrea Doria mit Hilfe eines Hofes eine dynastische Herrschaft in Genua errichten? Die Anzeichen sprechen eher dagegen. Der Condottiere hatte keine leiblichen Nachkommen, seine Grablege in der kleinen Krypta war nur für ihn und seine Gemahlin ausgelegt, und das eifersüchtige Geltungsstreben anderer Adelsfamilien hätte einer dynastischen Signorie entschiedenen Widerstand entgegengesetzt. Hof oder nicht? Die oben dargestellten Elemente weisen zahlreiche, wiewohl nicht alle einen italienischen Renaissance-Hof kennzeichnenden Eigenschaften auf. Man wird deshalb zwar nicht von einer „privaten Residenz – fürstlich, aber nicht herrschaftlich“ sprechen, wohl aber die Palastvilla Andrea Dorias unter Berücksichtigung seiner Person und politischen Machtstellung sowie nach Ausstattung und herrschaftlichem Anspruch als einen „Hof sui generis“ bezeichnen können.In the first half of the Cinquecento, Andrea Doria was a key figure of Ligurian and European history and one of the most powerful Renaissance princes of his time. This paper attempts to analyse the artistic strategies by which he deployed a level of pomp and splendor that was duly representative of his status in compliance with the unwritten laws of Renaissance society. It starts out by examining the Palazzo in Fassolo, which Perino del Vaga – a disciple of Raphael – was in charge of decorating in High Renaissance style, yet unknown in Genoa at the time. Furthermore, this paper addresses the questions relating to the interpretation of the iconography used in del Vaga’s frescoes. After analysing the reconstruction of the Doria family church San Matteo, a presentation of the medals and plaquettes with the prince’s engraved portrait follows. Subsequent passages are dedicated to various problems concerning the portrait paintings of Andrea Doria by Sebastiano del Piombo and Agnolo Bronzino. The text concludes with an analysis of the more than life-size honorary statue dedicated to the great citizen of the Republic of Genoa. This study also deals with the question of whether the “Principe“ entertained a princely court (“corte”). Andrea Doria was the Prince of Melfi and Tursi in Southern Italy, but had neither a formal title nor a claim to territorial sovereignty in Genoa. He owed his status as the de facto Signore of the city only to his personal role as the guarantor of Genoa’s loyalty to Emperor Charles V and of the city’s free status as a Republic. Usually the notion of “court” denotes having jurisdiction over a territory from a splendid and fortified urban residence as a visible center of power, a family church with an impressive sepulchre, civil servants, laqueys, courtiers, artists, and intellectuals as well as rituals like encomiastic processions, distinctions, titles and prebends that underline the prominent rank of the sovereign. At the same time, the ruler had to publicly demonstrate his preeminence through lavish generosity as well as somptuous self-representation by the means of art. The Doria palace outside the city walls is a mixture of Palazzo, villa suburbana, and porticus villa on the seaside. On the basis of its size, shape, and location it can be considered a princely country residence. It was only thanks to the magnificent interior decoration that the building adopted the character of a princely High Renaissance villa in the style of the Roman-Florentine “maniera.” The frescoes glorified the owner of the palace as a “new Augustus,” bringing peace, welfare and a Golden Age to Genoa as a “new Rome.” An interpretation of the costly wall paintings as a glorification of Charles V is highly unlikely since the Emperor paid only very few visits to Genoa. Andrea Doria´s prestigious construction activity destined to secure a visible eternal “memoria” also included the family church, which he had refurbished according to the latest Renaissance architectural trends. Several famous artists worked for Doria, such as Perino del Vaga, Nicola Valentino, who was responsible for the precious textiles in the residence, the famous sculptor Angelo Montorsoli, and renowned masters like Beccafumi, Pordenone, Cosini, and others. The residence was also an important financial and spiritual attraction for humanist intellectuals. Amazingly, the prince conspicuously refrained from artistic self-display, undoubtedly in order not to antagonize other Ligurian aristocratic families by creating a personality cult around himself. His portraits were either ordered by others or their commissioners are unknown, which is also true for the medals and plaquettes that feature Doria’s portrait. No sources indicate that the colossal statue erected in his honor was made at the prince’s own instigation. Did Andrea Doria intend to establish a dynastic rulership in Genoa by means of a court? The evidence at hand does not support this idea. The condottiere had no direct successor, the tomb in the family crypt was destined only for himself and his wife, and the Ligurian nobility´s jealous aspirations for power and influence would have offered stern opposition to a dynastic signoria. Did he entertain a court or not? Some of the elements listed above do exhibit characteristics of an Italian Renaissance court, whereas others do not. Therefore, it seems appropriate to define Andrea Doria’s palace villa as a “court sui generis”, taking into account its luxurious furnishings, its splendour, and Doria´s personality and political position of power

Multicriteria Assessment of Urban Development Projects – from Objectives to a Project Priority List

Impact assessment is a crucial basis for decision-making. Characterization of projects, identifying objectives and indicators for the justification and comparison of alternatives represent essential elements of any impact assessment. Comparing alternatives against a set of objectives and criteria addresses different impact types, understanding merits of each option, and establishing a preference ranking calls for a framework to integrate information on effects and impacts, with values and preferences of decision-makers and stakeholders. This paper refers to a study on “Integrated Urban Design Concepts” for the World Bank Consultancy for pilot cities under the “Uzbekistan Medium-Size Cities Integrated Urban Development Project” (MSCIUDP, World Bank, 2018). The focus of the paper is on multicriteria assessment that allows for a ranking of urban development projects for cities in Uzbekistan to enhance urban sustainability. The approach starts with the definition of a set of urban development objectives related to selected projects for several Uzbek cities. Based on the defined objectives, a set of indicators is extracted which allows describing the benefits on economic prosperity and well-being of society and on environment and climate improvement. Based on theassessment urban development projects shall be selected to be implemented in the pilot cities to foster their urban centrality. The paper describes the suggested projects for one of the Uzbek cities, the selected indicators to examine wether the urban development objectives with their related criteria are met, and discusses details on quantifying, weighting and merging the indicators to achieve a final priority list

Settlement growth and densification within a peri-urban polycentric region Examination of driving forces, model development and preliminary simulation results

The paper discusses research carried out within the EU funded project GEOLAND. Settlement growth will be modelled for small towns in a polycentric semi-rural region without a defined core city and with competing municipal efforts to attract industries and population on either side of the Rhine - in Austria und Switzerland. The model region is the Austrian Rhine valley. In particular, the model simulates population migration and commercial start ups controlled by regional and local factors (attractiveness/constraints). The approach concentrates on a multi agent system to simulate regional migration and allocation decisions of households and companies causing built-up area densification and land-use change patterns. Thus the models virtual "game board" is a cellular landscape (of 50x50m cells) characterised by several grid cell layers, which comprises information from high resolution earth observation data of different historic dates and cell-related additional demographic and employment data from official statistics, further landscape attractiveness and workplace accessibility. The model takes into account different settlement development velocities due to different migration/commercial start-up attractiveness and considers further the effects of introducing or not introducing green belt protection areas to hinder settlement expansion. To examine, whether competing job offers in Switzerland influence migration decisions, 2 different spatial attractiveness surface layer sets are generated – one for the those people who want to work in Switzerland and one for those who remain working in Austria. The suitability and relevance of the attractiveness criteria is examined via regression models, which explain regional migration patterns through various attractiveness factors and workplace accessibility. The very local decision where to settle is carried out by local attractiveness surface layers considering suitability for housing or commercial sites on a block level. The model is validated by control runs for past decades comparing model results with satellite image land-use classification on a regional and on a local level with different statistical parameters on a municipality - and further on cell basis. Scenario-runs till 2020 are carried out using overall population and employment forecasts for the region as growth framework together with land use patterns, zoning restrictions und future work-place accessibility conditions estimated applying an assumed future road network

ICT enabled participatory urban planning and policy development: The UrbanAPI project

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to present the effectiveness of participatory information and communication technology (ICT) tools for urban planning, in particular, supporting bottom-up decision-making in urban management and governance. Design/methodology/approach: This work begins with a presentation on the state of the art literature on the existing participatory approaches and their contribution to urban planning and the policymaking process. Furthermore, a case study, namely, the UrbanAPI project, is selected to identify new visualisation and simulation tools applied at different urban scales. These tools are applied in four different European cities - Vienna, Bologna, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Ruse - with the objective to identify the data needs for application development, commonalities in requirements of such participatory tools and their expected impact in policy and decision-making processes. Findings: The case study presents three planning applications: three-dimensional Virtual Reality at neighbourhood scale, Public Motion Explorer at city-wide scale and Urban Growth Simulation at city-region scale. UrbanAPI applications indicate both active and passive participation secured by applying these tools at different urban scales and hence facilitate evidence-based urban planning decision-making. Structured engagement with the city administrations indicates commonalities in user needs and application requirements creating the potential for the development of generic features in these ICT tools which can be applied to many other cities throughout Europe. Originality/value: This paper presents new ICT-enabled participatory urban planning tools at different urban scales to support collaborative decision-making and urban policy development. Various technologies are used for the development of these IT tools and applied to the real environment of four European cities. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Smart Urban simulation tools for planning decision support need smart data and smart data gathering methods

Urban growth is a challenge for most cities all over the world, especially in less developed countries. This tendency calls for smart/innovative instruments to foster sustainable urban development. Decision support for urban planning is required in order to reduce costs and resources to better accommodate new population, willing to move into urban areas. Latin American countries e.g. went from being predominantly rural to predominantly urban within a few decades, leading to high concentrations of urban population. This urban growth is expected to continue leading to severe financial stress for city budgets by providing the required infrastructure. AIT - Austrian Institute of Technology has been contracted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to develop a smart “Urban Infrastructure Development Simulator” (UIDS) – a tool to performe urban growth simulation and related infrastructure cost estimations, which can be used effordless to support urban planning decissions. Therefore an Agent-based simulation model representing the urban growth by estimating dwelling behavior of the cities’ today’s residents and future residents from outside the urban region was developed. This urban growth simulation tool is based on input data with different spatial and temporal resolution. Data from Geographical Information Systems, Remote Sensing as well as statistical data are used to simulate scenarios for future development paths. To support the urban planning process such kind of tools need to have a high flexibility in data management, e.g., the import of new (e.g., more accurate) data to calculate new scenarios. But beyond this common need, what if the data is not or only partially available, how can a data gathering process be supported by new tools and methods. The paper will introduce different innovative ways urban planners can be supported to gain new data, which can be used in tools as the UIDS. The approaches developed enable the urban planners to easily introduce important tacit knowledge about the city into the simulation tool. Another method will depict how citizens participation for data collection can be enabled. The paper will further elaborate in general which challenges have been encountered and which solutions reduce the problems using different temporal and spatial data. The results discussed are based on experiences gathered whithin several urban growth simulation projects performed for different regions in Europe and Latin America

Exploring population distribution and motion dynamics through mobile phone device data in selected cities – lessons learned from the UrbanAPI project

The paper discusses experiences of development and implementation of public motion explorer (PME) tool as part of the EU FP7 project urbanAPI. This tool has been applied to three EU cities with the objective to investigate population distribution dynamics and anonymous population movement patterns within urban environments as an instrument to map shapes of urban attractiveness and accessibility and as a support for transportation and infrastructure planning. The paper describes technical details of the Motion Explorer application by demonstrating the different applications for the City of Vienna, Bologna and Vitoria-Gasteiz and it discusses the results of the first round of the user evaluation using the Criteria Indicators and Metrics methodology. The initial results indicate that the application is intuitive and highly useful for city planning and provides the evidence-based information, which is either expensive or difficult to collect using other approaches