Analysis of residential choice behavior at community scale

The complex problems shared by many cities throughout Japan are evidence of the impacts of land use plans that have been poorly designed and managed. Most of the existing plans in Japan have focused on the metropolitan areas but nowadays the physical layout or land use of communities is fundamental to sustainability. Community sustainability requires a transition from poorly-managed large-scale plans to land use planning practices at the community scale that maintain efficient infrastructures, and ensure close-knit neighborhoods and a sense of community. This paper provides a scheme for discussing the residential choice of people at the community scale in a local city in Japan in order to help local communities or local authorities concerned with suitable land use planning. First, this paper gives the key principles of residential choice behavior through the statistical analysis of the revealed preference of people who actually made the decision to choose the location of their new residence. Some interesting results are a bigger correlation than expected between the location of residence and the place of work, and a strong attachment of movers to their old communities. The latter half of this paper describes a modeling process for specifying the residential choice at the community scale. The discrete choice model adopted in the present study is a conventional disaggregate logit model that is capable of representing complicated individual choice behavior while they are changing their place of residence.

Spatial structure and prediction of Land use change considering development projects in urban promotion districts

n this paper, the actual conditions and the change structure of land use by using mesh data are studied in urban promotion area in a local hub city of Fukuoka, Japan. Firstly, all meshes are classified into 15 patterns based on distribution of land use. Then, transition probability models are made out based on the change of these 15 patterns. The Change structure of land use in an area depends on whether development projects are carried out or not. Therefore, all of the meshes are divided into two groups, and different transition probability models are proposed. Finally, a prediction method of land use is proposed under the consideration of the changing structure of meshes. Though our proposed approach is a macroscopic forecasting method of land use, it is useful to evaluate the effects of urban policies for development projects.

Evaluation of City Planning Road Development Measures by Microscopic Traffic Simulation

This study was made on the development plan of Kawahara Avenue, a road project authorized in city planning of Miyazaki City in Japan. The Kawahara Avenue development is planned along the Oyodo River. The land use of the area along the route comprises the tourist hotel zone, residential zone, and industrial zone. The Kawahara Avenue planning, unlike most other road development plans in Japan, requires much more than simply providing for the smooth flow of traffic. In the tourist hotel zone where the leading Miyazaki City hotels are located, the image and impression the tourists may have about the city is an important consideration. Therefore, the city government intends that this section of the road should not have excessive traffic. In the residential zone, the existing road network consists of narrow streets with no sidewalks. In addition to the sidewalks to be built, Kawahara Avenue is expected to handle a great deal of the traffic passing the residential district. This should help meet the goal in providing a safe environment for the pedestrians in other narrow streets without sidewalks. Under the circumstances as stated above, the planning has faced significant constraints in land purchasing involving forced move-out in the result of financial problems and coordination of the views between the city administration and the residents in the vicinity. The purpose of this research is to study under the given constraints what would be the most appropriate plan for the development of Kawahara Avenue. First, a traffic monitoring survey was conducted in the subject districts to compile Origin-Destination (OD) data of traffic flow in the districts. Then, the road network of the subject districts and traffic signal phase data were digitized to carry out microscopic traffic simulation and checked for reproduction accuracy of the current situation. The results confirmed that simulation reproduces the traffic conditions of the districts with sufficient precision. Furthermore, we prepared several hypothetical proposals for the road development and evaluated with the same simulation system as to how the traffic situations would be had those proposals been implemented. As a result it was demonstrated that the original goals can be achieved by developing the road within the given constraints.

Enhancement of Terrestrial Diffuse X-ray Emission Associated With Coronal Mass Ejection and Geomagnetic Storm

We present an analysis of a Suzaku observation taken during the geomagnetic storm of 2005 August 23-24. We found time variation of diffuse soft X-ray emission when a coronal mass ejection hit Earth and caused a geomagnetic storm. The diffuse emission consists of fluorescent scattering of solar X-rays and exospheric solarwind charge exchange. The former is characterized by a neutral oxygen emission line due to strong heating of the upper atmosphere during the storm time, while the latter is dominated by a sum of C V, C VI, N VI, N VII, O VII, and O VIII emission lines due to the enhanced solar wind flux in the vicinity of the exosphere. Using the solar wind data taken with the ACE and WIND satellites,a time correlation between the solar wind and the strong O VII line flux were investigated. We estimated necessary column densities for the solar X-ray scattering and exospheric SWCX. From these results, we argue that a part of the solar wind ions enter inside the magnetosphere and cause the SWCX reaction.Comment: 33 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

Characterization of soil microflora on a successional glacier foreland in the high Arctic on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada using phospholipid fatty acid analysis

We investigated soil microbial biomass and community structure along a primary successional gradient after deglaciation in the high Arctic, at Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada(80°50\u27N, 82°45\u27W). Soil samples were collected from five glacial moraines(M1 to M5) with different developmental periods. Time since the recession of glaciers at M1, M3, and M5 was estimated to be 300, 9000, and over 17000 years, respectively. Soil samples from five points in each moraine were subjected to phospholipid fatty acid(PLFA) analysis. Total PLFA content(an index of microbial biomass) in M1 was significantly lower than those in older moraines(M2-M5), whereas the content remained at an almost constant level from M2 to M5. Significant differences in PLFA composition(an index of microbial community structure) were also observed between M1 and older moraines(M2-M5); the proportion of straight chain saturated fatty acids in M1 was higher than those in older moraines(M2-M5), whereas those of branched fatty acids and unsaturated fatty acids in M1 were lower than those in older moraines(M2-M5). These results suggest that changes of microflora occurred in the early phase of succession after deglaciation and became stable thereafter. Microbial biomass had a positive correlation with soil carbon and nitrogen contents over the successional chronosequence, suggesting that development of soil microflora was affected in part by organic matter accumulation

Automatic sensing device of electrical characteristics of living trees

The electrical impedance of a living tissue reflects its cell construction and physiological activity. For this purpose we developed an automatic sensing device of electrical tissue characteristics. The system is composed of a part measuring impedance at multifrequency points and a part analyzing parameters of dispersion of bioelectrical impedance, impedances are measured at eight frequency points of 1 kHz-500 kHz. The parameters for Cole-Cole arc's law are determined automatically by a personal computer program </p

Analysis of Residential Choice Behavior at Community Scale

The complex problems shared by many cities throughout Japan are evidence of the impacts of land use plans that have been poorly designed and managed. Most of the existing plans in Japan have focused on the metropolitan areas but nowadays the physical layout or land use of communities is fundamental to sustainability. Community sustainability requires a transition from poorly-managed large-scale plans to land use planning practices at the community scale that maintain efficient infrastructures, and ensure close-knit neighborhoods and a sense of community. This paper provides a scheme for discussing the residential choice of people at the community scale in a local city in Japan in order to help local communities or local authorities concerned with suitable land use planning. First, this paper gives the key principles of residential choice behavior through the statistical analysis of the revealed preference of people who actually made the decision to choose the location of their new residence. Some interesting results are a bigger correlation than expected between the location of residence and the place of work, and a strong attachment of movers to their old communities. The latter half of this paper describes a modeling process for specifying the residential choice at the community scale. The discrete choice model adopted in the present study is a conventional disaggregate logit model that is capable of representing complicated individual choice behavior while they are changing their place of residence.44 th European Congress of the European Regional Science Association Regions and Fiscal Federalism, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal, 25-29 August 200

Vegetation development and carbon storage on a glacier foreland in the High Arctic, Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard

AbstractThe distribution of organic carbon and its relationship to vegetation development were examined on a glacier foreland near Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard (79°N). In a 0.72-km2 area, we established 43 study plots on three line transects along primary succession from recently deglaciated area to old well-vegetated area. At each plot, we measured the type and percent coverage of vegetation types. The organic carbon content of vegetation, organic soil, and mineral soil samples was determined based on their organic carbon concentration and bulk density. Cluster analysis based on vegetation coverage revealed five types of ground surfaces representing variations in the amounts and allocation patterns of organic carbon. In the later stages of succession, 7%–24% and 31%–40% of organic carbon was contained in the organic and deeper soil layers, respectively. Organic carbon storage in the later stages of succession ranged from 1.1 – 7.9 kg C m−2. A larger amount of organic carbon, including ancient carbon in a raised beach deposit, was expected to be contained in much deeper soil layers. These results suggest that both vegetation development and geological history affect ecosystem carbon storage and that a non-negligible amount of organic carbon is distributed in this High Arctic glacier foreland

Analysis of Residential Choice Behavior at Community Scale

44 th European Congress of the European Regional Science Association Regions and Fiscal Federalism, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal, 25-29 August 2004The complex problems shared by many cities throughout Japan are evidence of the impacts of land use plans that have been poorly designed and managed. Most of the existing plans in Japan have focused on the metropolitan areas but nowadays the physical layout or land use of communities is fundamental to sustainability. Community sustainability requires a transition from poorly-managed large-scale plans to land use planning practices at the community scale that maintain efficient infrastructures, and ensure close-knit neighborhoods and a sense of community. This paper provides a scheme for discussing the residential choice of people at the community scale in a local city in Japan in order to help local communities or local authorities concerned with suitable land use planning. First, this paper gives the key principles of residential choice behavior through the statistical analysis of the revealed preference of people who actually made the decision to choose the location of their new residence. Some interesting results are a bigger correlation than expected between the location of residence and the place of work, and a strong attachment of movers to their old communities. The latter half of this paper describes a modeling process for specifying the residential choice at the community scale. The discrete choice model adopted in the present study is a conventional disaggregate logit model that is capable of representing complicated individual choice behavior while they are changing their place of residence