Research policy and review 25. Modeling land use and transportation: an interpretative review for growth areas

Urban growth is taking new forms in recently urbanized or formerly suburban areas, characterized by low density, heavy dependence on automobile transportation, and multiple activity centers. In order to understand better such "contemporary urban areas', researchers need land-use models that realistically capture the key features of such areas and that can handle detailed data sets. The literature on large-scale land-use modeling is reviewed. Characterizing the known models along several dimensions describing purpose, conceptual basis, mathematical content, and level of detail, models are selected that are representative of the range of approaches taken. Six of these are reviewed in detail, and four others are discussed more briefly. The existing literature forces one to choose between tractability and suitability for contemporary urban areas. This conclusion leads to some brief suggestions on directions for future work. -from Authors