Healthy places, active transport and path dependence: a review of the literature

Children walking to school, people cycling to the shops or work and neighbours chatting in the street, these are some of the gauges of an active and healthy community that can be achieved through utilising good design principles. But are these principles being applied in urban developments or are policy-makers following an unfortunate ‘path dependent’ trajectory that severely limits the ‘best practice’ outcomes sought? This review examines current research on path dependence to determine how this concept advances our understanding of barriers to change in the built environment, active transport and healthy communities. An online database search of scholarly bibliographic records identified 22 relevant articles for a critical review of studies that evaluated path dependence in the urban and built environment literature with a focus on transport, urban planning and health. A thematic analysis of the articles showed that different types of path dependence have contributed to the dominance of policies and designs supporting car-based transport to the detriment of public transport and active transport modes, leading to sub-optimal development patterns becoming 'locked-in’. However, the outcomes for active transport and physical activity are not all dire, and path dependence theory does provide some guidance on changing policy to achieve better outcomes. So what? This review suggests that path dependence is one of the best theoretical frameworks to help health promoters understand barriers to change and can provide some insights into developing future successful public health interventions. Future studies could focus further on active transport, local neighbourhood development and physical activity

The perception of place in planning for urban change: A small world paradigm

Urban change is often difficult and disappointing because people's expectations sometimes fail to be realised.This research seeks to understand what people's expectations are for good urban places in a changing urban context and why their expectations are sometimes not satisfied. The research examines the processof perception and the content and structure of people's expectations. The stakeholders expectations are framedwithin the influence of their knowledge structure and individual agency. Concept maps are derived froma semantic differential task and analysed using nonmetric multidimensional scaling (MDS). The results show that each group's conceptual structure of an urban place differs; however, an aggregate concept map illustrates a compelling cluster of urban design variables that describes urban density and movement pathways categorised here as the dynamic of Cluster and Connectivity. This dynamic resounds with a small world network theory, proposed as an inherent in the process of perception and its conceptual structure of place. Theimplication is that a small world network metaphor may offer a paradigm for planning urban change using principles that resonate with people's perception of place

The evolution of a masterplan: Brisbane's South Bank, 1991-2012

South Bank is now a well-established part of Brisbane's lifestyle and entertainment scene. From the preparation of Expo 88 as part of Australia's bicentennial celebrations to the redevelopment of the site post-Expo, South Bank has been intensely masterplanned. This qualitative research is a longitudinal study of the evolution of the South Bank masterplan described by tracking the masterplanning responses to crises. The evolution of South Bank masterplanning is related through its leaders who participated in a semi-structured telephone interview. The interviews and archival masterplans chronologically illustrated the responses to crises and effects of masterplanning for certainty and uncertainty

The dynamics of bike-sharing in Washington, D.C. and Brisbane, Australia: implications for policy and planning

The rapid growth in public bike-sharing programs (PBSPs) worldwide has left numerous research gaps, particularly related to environmental benefits, social benefits, and data from systems in cities with historically low bicycle ridership. We offer a battery of metrics and present results on their application to Washington, DC’s Capital Bikeshare and Brisbane's CityCycle. These metrics, which examine neighborhood performance and temporal and spatial ridership trends, initiate discussions on the policies and planning that make for a successful PBSP. We found that providing helmets, expanding hours of operation, and adding stations in suburbs with few or no stations leads to higher ridership

Home-based work in cities: in search of an appropriate urban planning response

Home-based work is becoming an increasingly popular form of work in cities, fuelled by technological advances, lifestyle preferences, demographical change and rapid evolution of the knowledge economy. In many cities, particularly those planned and developed with intentional separation of land uses, this return of economic activities to residential neighbourhoods brings along both lifestyle opportunities and spatial challenges. Attempts to formulate appropriate urban planning responses are hindered by the limited understanding of home-based workers’ needs and aspirations, as well as their impacts on the built environment. Responding to this knowledge gap, this paper presents the results of a survey focused on urban planning implications of home-based work within the City of Gold Coast (Queensland, Australia). The findings provide strong evidence of home-based workers’ preferences for neighbourhoods that integrate residential amenities with place-making initiatives to enhance economic performance, networking and collaboration. Several urban planning recommendations are provided in three separate scenarios to facilitate the formulation of strategies prompting a gradual evolution of residential neighbourhoods towards live/work urban environments

Shaping travels and land use with bus rapid transit: a developed city’s visualisation with smartcard and census data

Transit and land-use integration is regarded as one of the most important means of avoiding or reducing car dependence and urban sprawl, which are thought as major culprits of unsustainability. In developing countries, rail rapid transit could be too expensive to become the predominant component of their respective systems. However, bus rapid transit (BRT) as one of the cheapest forms of mass transit is a better alternative for those countries. In developing countries, BRT has transformed numerous cities such as Curitiba, Brazil; Bogota, Columbia; and Guangzhou, China. Can BRT have the same transformative impacts for cities in developed countries as well? Can the impacts of BRT be visualized using the transit population? Given that few cities in developed countries have BRT and ridership data of BRT are not always available, the above questions have not been well addressed before. To answer these two questions, we analysed smartcard swipes over a five-day weekday period (11–15 March 2013) for Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, and reconstructed trip trajectories of those 255,887 transit riders. We found that BRT serves a significant percentage and number of travellers, thus shaping travel behaviour and ultimately land use – when transit ridership and rate of transit usage are used as indicators. This is a significant achievement in Australia, a country known for its car dependence and urban sprawl

Developing a learning technology preparedness plan

Our project outlines a strategic approach to evaluate the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management's (GPEM) readiness to engage with emerging technologies and the poster outlines a suggested sequential strategy to effectively engage the key stakeholders in developing a consensus Learning Technology Preparedness Plan, which will facilitate student learning outcomes and their educational experiences. An important outcome is the identification of a process that can be implemented by other higher education institutions and organisations to assess their readiness to engage with a range of emerging technologies and the strategies that may be needed to facilitate this process

Transport mode choice in South East Asia: Investigating the relationship between transport users’ perception and travel behaviour in Johor Bahru, Malaysia

The worldwide increase in private car dependency poses a set of significant environmental, economic and social sustainability challenges that continue to undermine the urban quality of life. Rapid motorisation, particularly in South East Asia (SEA), has emerged as a global concern given the region's cumulative population, rate of industrialisation, and large-scale urbanisation. Thus, there is a compelling need to enhance our understanding of the underlying dynamics of how people perceive and use transportation such that transport planning is better placed to address the current, unsustainable travel patterns in SEA. Despite this need, there has been relatively limited SEA-based research that has endeavoured to examine travel perceptions and transport mode choice from a non-instrumental perspective. This research redresses this deficit by investigating the relationship between transport users' perceptions and travel behaviours within SEA, with a particular focus on psychosocial drivers of transport mode choice interfaced with more traditional instrumental measures.Spatially stratified survey data have been collected in a case study area, Johor Bahru, Malaysia, comprising users from different transport user groups. Employing regression modelling, drivers of individual's travel behaviour are examined. Results highlight the merit in recognising the role of non-instrumental motives alongside instrumental motives to explain transport mode choice. We conclude by highlighting that transport mode choices are motivated by a range of locational, socio-demographic, psychological and cultural determinants. The current research has contributed to a better understanding of transport mode choice in Johor Bahru and provides a foundation for future SEA-based travel behaviour research. Studies in this area can inform more sustainable travel behaviour in the SEA region