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The purpose of this thesis is to understand the applications and limitations of the Climatological Dispersion Model (CDM), and to explain the role of dispersion modeling within the framework of urban and regional planning. In order to reach the first objective, a detailed study study of the mechanics of the CDM was conducted. Completion of this task provided the necessary foundation for a discussion of the assets and limitations of the model. Conclusions and recommendations are made concerning the utility of the CDM for an urban area.The second objective focuses on the practical applications of dispersion modeling and is divided into four areas; the role of dispersion modeling in air quality management, the practical applications of dispersion modeling from a community view, the incorporation of dispersion modeling into the planning process, and the effectiveness and future direction of dispersion modeling. / Department of Urban Planning

This study demonstrates how a community can effectively use brownfield redevelopment strategies as an integral component of its comprehensive plan strategy. The research presents a primer on the major advantages and disadvantages of conducting brownfield site remediation. Overall, it was found that a significant portion of the goals and objectives outlined in the comprehensive plan for Anderson, Indiana can be directly impacted through a carefully planned and coordinated brownfield redevelopment strategy. Ultimately, a sample site design was conducted for a site within Anderson to provide the city with an example of the design process required for successful brownfield site redevelopment. / Department of Landscape Architecture

Cities evolve in a rhizome-like fashion interconnected nodes accelerating the flow of information, rate of innovation, and the accumulation of wealth, but also making apparent new inequalities and informal economies. Since the '70s, the green and feminist movements, and self-help housing, are challenging the duality of Western discourse, scientific methods, and the separation between working and living. The creation of productive livelihoods and self-sufficient households---including local food production---can help restore local cultural and ecological habitats in the urban milieu. Sustainability is redefined as maintaining, improving and restoring local household productivity levels. This multi-disciplinary study considers the evolution of technological, social and artistic innovation; it considers housing as a fluid interface between human and biological systems, thus a social organization defined by its human ecology. Overall productivity performance is measured in terms of cultural and biological diversity, and leisure time produced.

Metropolitan Adelaide in Australia is dominated by low-density suburbs with an extensive and large road supply, which brings with it car-dependent lifestyles that are ultimately unsustainable in the longer term. Spatial changes are needed to make a city such as Adelaide less car-dependent towards a city that relies on more sustainable transport modes for its day to day urban travel needs. On the other hand, to date, the impacts of local urban form on travel behaviour have not been adequately investigated through empirical research in Australia. The importance of research on this matter rises from the institutional and academic efforts to modify the growing car-dependent lifestyle in Australian cities through spatial planning and quality design. This thesis presents the results from a comparative study of travel patterns among residents of four suburban residential areas in metropolitan Adelaide. Using existing datasets together with inventory data of urban environment characteristics from original fieldwork, this research examines to what extent there are associations between various attributes of a particular urban location as they relate to travel behaviour and household socio-economics. The findings derived from quantitative and qualitative methods suggest that urban form/design must be taken into consideration in policy making for mobility reduction. Well-connected streets, and close proximity to jobs and key functions were shown to induce non-motorised travel. From an urban design and planning policy perspective, this suggests that greater daily activity and consequent health and environmental benefits might accrue from designing human-scale, walkable communities that appeal to the preference of different social groups versus investment in master-planned communities in the hope of swaying travel behaviour. That is, pedestrian-friendly places suited to the taste preferences of socio-demographic groups might induce more physical activity over the long run through the process of residential self-selection than overt efforts to create fully planned, attractive and quality landscapes all over suburbia. / Thesis (PhDPlanning)--University of South Australia, 2007.

Thesis (MReg & UrbPlan)--University of South Australia, 1998

University of Technology, Sydney. Institute of Sustainable Futures. / This thesis investigates the implications that urban motorway development has for the sustainability of cities. It does this by focusing on the sudden increase in road traffic that follows after the opening of additional motorway capacity, known as induced traffic growth, and asking whether induced traffic growth affects the ability of an urban system to sustain its essential economic functions. The investigation also addresses how urban systems impact on the biosphere. Induced traffic growth, and the urban motorway development responsible for it, are often cited as a threat to sustainability because they are seen to increase fuel consumption and air pollution without necessarily improving accessibility within a city. Opponents to urban motorway construction claim that it merely represents a reshuffling of system elements, such that the spatial relationships between transport and land-use are changed, but the amount of time spent travelling, and the number of economic exchanges made by people, remain much the same. Motorway development advocates refute these claims, arguing that motorway construction reduces travel times, cuts emissions and fuel consumption and increases economic activity, thereby enhancing sustainability. While it should be possible to resolve these issues through a program of empirical analysis, the phenomenon remains contested, raising questions about why and how its contested status affects transport decision-making and transport science. These questions are answered in this thesis by first investigating the social and political context in which debate over induced traffic growth has taken place. To do this, Soft Systems Methodology is used to investigate the way in which conflicts over urban motorway development have been resolved in London, Sydney and Zürich. The comparative analysis highlights differences between the rules of the political decision-making systems in each of the cities, and how these distribute power to different groups within society. While the history of conflicts is similar in each of the cities, more power is given to special interest groups from industry in London and Sydney. By contrast, the system in Zürich gives more power to resident populations through its system of direct democracy. Consequently, urban motorway development, the induced traffic growth it gives rise to and the impacts they have on city operations are acted upon in Zürich to the extent that transport policy has focused more on the development of comprehensive public transport systems. This leads to the conclusion that the contested status of induced traffic growth is more a product of the socio-economic goals of particular interest groups within society than it is of shortcomings in the empirical record or essentially unresolved theoretical issues. With the political context as background, the thesis then reviews the empirical analyses and theoretical explanations for the phenomenon. First, a review of past empirical analyses is undertaken to identify the grounds that have been cited to refute the induced traffic growth hypothesis. Two key areas are identified. The first involves difficulties with distinguishing the sources of induced traffic growth from traffic reassignment. The second concerns the absence of traffic data for routes that are potential alternatives to a new motorway from which traffic reassignment may have taken place. A case study of the M4 Motorway in Sydney is presented with data for all arterial through-routes that cross relevant screenlines, thereby overcoming several of the shortcomings identified in the review. This case study adds to the general literature of case studies that corroborate the induced traffic growth hypothesis, but provides the first substantial documented case for an Australian city. A review of the theoretical explanations for the phenomenon finds that while both microeconomic evaluation and standard modelling procedures provide accounts for the phenomenon that meet institutional expectations of technical veracity, neither constitutes a substantial description of the causal mechanism for the phenomenon, leaving unanswered questions about some findings in the empirical record. This conclusion prompts the development of a systems-based explanation for induced traffic growth that defines it as a form of multiple system feedback processes controlled by a travel budget time constant. By accounting for the phenomenon and its effects in this way, an explanation is provided for changes to travel behaviour and patterns of land-use development that reveals how urban motorway development affects urban systems in an holistic way. The final section of the thesis combines the insights gained by examination of the politics of the transport decision-making system with empirical analyses and theoretical explanations for induced traffic growth, to produce a general systems view of cities and their place within the earth’s biosphere. This treatment considers the problems of oil depletion and global climate change, and the effects that urban motorway development has on the ability of urban systems to adapt to changes in the system environment brought about by these problems. The thesis concludes that urban motorway development and the processes that it triggers, which are embodied in the phenomenon of induced traffic growth, can undermine a city’s comparative ability to sustain the accessibility needs of its residents.

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