Spatial analysis of residential development processes:uncovering the Dutch densification potential

Urban areas are rapidly transforming. This is particularly true in the Netherlands where residential development is continuing to claim agricultural land alongside with transforming vacant industrial buildings or filling under-used sites. How to steer future urban development is the topic of heated debates and especially the potential of urban transformations to accommodate the projected growth in housing stock is questioned. We study the feasibility of further intensification with a spatial analysis approach that distinguishes different residential development processes and quantifies their relative importance. Using highly detailed cadastral data related to location, age and function of all individual buildings in the country, we differentiate between processes such as: densification of residential neighbourhoods, transformation of brownfields and greyfields and green field redevelopment. Our results indicate that just over half of the total net increase of around 1 million residences in the past 17 years took place within the existing urban fabric. Only a small proportion of the total increase (5.5%) was placed on former green areas within cities, whereas densification of existing residential areas and transformation accommodated 25% and 21% of the increase respectively. Using binomial logistic regression techniques, we assess the importance of a range of different drivers for this process. The results suggest that there is still substantial scope for further intensification in the coming decades when another million or so new residences have to be constructed

Calibration of the 2UP model:Spinlab Research Memorandum SL-13

The 2UP model – to an Urban Preview – is developed for the spatially explicit simulation of the future growth of cities and population at a global scale. The model describes urban land use at a fine 30” spatial resolution (approx. 1km near the equator). In the current version of the model, the allocation of urban land use is mainly based on current population densities. To improve this calibration PBL has requested Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to apply a more advanced, statistics-based calibration procedure that links observed land-use patterns to spatially explicit drivers of urban development. The output of this calibration effort can be used to define the suitability for urban and in the 2UP model. This short memo describes the method applied in calibration and discusses the results

Constructing high-resolution housing price indices for the Netherlands:Spinlab Research Memorandum SL-14

The main research objective of this subproject is to quantify the spatial variation in revenues that can be expected from different types of residential development. Based on this information the relative profitability of different urban development strategies can be assessed in subsequent simulations in a land-use modelling environment. The current report tries to address which factors matter for the added-value of locations in housing prices, looking at factors such as proximity to jobs, distance to train stations, the presence of amenities, or the amount of nature in the area