Brian Muller

Residential Location and the Biophysical Environment: Exurban Development Agents in a Heterogeneous Landscape

Agent-based models offer a promising framework for analyzing interactions between agents and a heterogeneous landscape. Researchers have identified a complex of factors that influence exurban development, including demographic shifts and location attractiveness of natural amenities as a magnet to amenity-seeking migrants. Attractiveness is often defined in terms of local or on-lot amenities, including scenic views, the availability of natural features, and low levels of noise. However, exurban-growth models have not fully incorporated a fundamental insight of this literature, that the location behavior of exurban residents is sensitive to fine-grained variations in their biophysical environment. In this study we evaluate how agents and households operate in exurban environments and respond to biophysical features. We simulate household decisionmaking in terms of preferences for features such as site accessibility, two-dimensional amenities, and three-dimensional scenic views. Our results show that, as we build two-dimensional and three-dimensional landscape layers, our model captures the characteristics of landscape change with increasing accuracy. This approach has considerable potential to improve our ability to describe development dynamics in heterogeneous land markets.

The Role of Social Media in Green Infrastructure Planning: A Case Study of Neighborhood Participation in Park Siting

Abstract This paper explores the role of social media in facilitating green infrastructure planning through supporting discourses among online participants. Building on the communicative rationality theory, it adopts interpretive discourse analysis to explore ways in which online participants of a neighborhood online forum in Eugene, Oregon were able to assess and clarify the validity of each others claims while discussing the location of a new park. The results show that this forum did not create a collaborative process, but facilitated this process through its integration with other methods. It facilitated a valid dialogue among the group members and provided valuable information for planners regarding the interests of a selected community of citizens.

Land use planning and wildfire risk mitigation: an analysis of wildfire-burned subdivisions using high-resolution remote sensing imagery and GIS data

This paper evaluates risk factors that influence the probability that a house will burn from wildfire. A logistic regression is used to analyse data processed from pre-fire and post-fire IKONOS images and other geo-referenced data. The dependent variable is the probability that a given house will burn. A total of 12 independent variables are evaluated: vegetation density; area of defensible space; adjacency of a parcel to public lands; proximity of a house to fire station; road width; road type; parcel size; subdivision morphology; assessed value; elevation; slope and aspect. Model results generally support dominant land use planning and design strategies for wildfire risk reduction including vegetation treatments, site selection with respect to topography, and improving access to fire stations.

Governing Wildfire Risks: What Shapes County Hazard Mitigation Programs?

Land use policies and programs offer a diverse set of strategies for management of wildfire risk. Many county governments have only recently begun to implement such strategies, and relatively little research has been conducted on county activity in wildfire risk reduction such as hazard assessment, plan making, regulation of land use, and subdivision design. Based on a questionnaire survey, the authors explore influences over choice of risk reduction strategy by county governments. Our findings underscore the importance of governance variables including intergovernmental grants in development of mitigation programs.

The dynamics of land development in resort communities: a multiagent simulation of growth regimes and housing choice

Over the past thirty years, recreation communities in many parts of the globe have gone through cycles of diversification and integration into complex recreation regions. As resort communities mature, they face increasing pressures on scarce recreational resources, demands for economic diversification, and changing attitudes toward tourism on the part of local residents. A variety of land-use management practices and economic development initiatives has emerged in resort towns in response to resource congestion and other growth issues. In this paper we explore alternative growth strategies through a simulation of housing decisions by primary actors in resort land markets. We use a multiagent system to model the dynamics of growth regimes, assess the influence of recreational and town amenities, and evaluate the effect of alternative growth processes on long-term development patterns. Our case study area is Steamboat Springs and surrounding parts of Routt County, a four-season recreational region in northwestern Colorado.

Regional governance and hazard information: the role of co-ordinated risk assessment and regional spatial accounting in wildfire hazard mitigation

With the threat of wildfire hanging over many communities in the Western and Southern United States, wildfire mitigation is evolving into a significant public responsibility for rural and urban edge county governments. Regional governance is an important piece of the effort to reduce wildfire risks although still weakly developed as a policy arena. This project explores two dimensions in which planning support systems can support regional governance: assessing patterns of wildfire risk accumulation; and, evaluating land use planning alternatives and their effects on cumulative risk levels. These tools are examined for regional governance using a prototype planning information system, the Alternative Growth Futures (AGF) tool, a scenario-building approach developed at the University of Colorado Denver. The project develops a hybrid urban growth model that integrates logistic regression techniques and methods for simulation of growth alternatives. This model is used to evaluate the attractiveness of undeveloped building sites with respect to natural amenities, distance to primary urban services and site characteristics such as slope. The model and scenario-testing framework are reasonably robust and suggest that regional spatial accounting methods have potential as a framework for inter-governmental and public discussion around wildfire planning.

Urbanization and Resort Regions: Creating an Agent-Based Simulation of Housing Density in “Ski Country”

THE economy of recreation and retirement is an important creator of urban form in many regions across the United States and worldwide. Demands for recreation and retirement stimulate cycles of infrastructure and housing investment that lead rural and resource-based regions through progressive phases of immigration and economic change. As recreation communities mature, they diversify and take on the more complex features of urban areas. The growth patterns in many U.S. cities can be explained partly by waves of retirees and trends in recreation. Large parts of the Mediterranean, all three coasts of the United States, and the Rocky Mountain region are still being transformed through the maturing of recreation and retirement communities. Non-metro counties in the United States experienced a significant population increase during the 1990s; in recreation counties the rate of increase was 20.2 percent. Mountain resort communities have responded to population growth through changes in housing mix, infill, and a variety of growth management tools. Many of these communities were semi-deserted mining or ranching towns 40 years ago but with rapid rates of growth during the 1980s and 1990s, they have developed into small urban centers. Researchers have pointed out the appearance of high-density development in mountain resort communities. We Muller et al.

Online Participatory Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges for Enriching Participatory Planning

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Planning organizations are increasingly using online technologies for public engagement, but there is dispute about their value in enriching public engagement. We explore an interdisciplinary literature on the capability of online participatory tools (OPTs) to respond to the goals of participatory planning. Proponents argue that OPTs can help attract more citizens, engage a more diverse population, disseminate information more broadly, gather local knowledge, and facilitate consensus building. Skeptics argue that OPTs can intensify social injustice and an unequal distribution of power as well as create or exacerbate privacy, security, and data management issues. We critically examine the pros and cons of OPTs, assess their potential role in facilitating public engagement, and provide guidelines for their implementation. These results are time sensitive because of the rapidly changing environment of digital technologies. Takeaway for practice: There are still many unresolved questions about the benefits of OPTs. Research suggests that they can at times be effective in addressing goals of public participation, such as inclusive planning, consensus building, learning from local knowledge, and mobilizing social action. Their effectiveness depends significantly on implementation, however. Integrating online participation strategies with the overall participation process and other digital infrastructures within the organization may foster their effectiveness. Planners collaborating with formal or informal learning networks or related professionals can facilitate the effective use of OPTs within their own organizations. Additional information is needed on which OPTs are most appropriate in which planning environments, how well OPTs meet a range of major participatory objectives, how to make trade-offs between OPTs and face-to-face methods, and the best managerial structures for ensuring their effective use.

Urbanization, Urban Form and Adaptation: A Comparison of Four U.S. and Chinese Cities

This chapter explores the urban development histories of four Chinese and U.S. cities: Chengdu, Shenzhen, Phoenix and Las Vegas. These cities experienced rapid population growth at different phases after World War II, and aggressively pursued economic growth through a mix of development strategies: national-level investments, programs to promote targeted industries and local entrepreneurship, and deregulation policies designed to build comparative advantage. All four cities have sprawled broadly across their surrounding landscapes. Their patterns of urban expansion are organized both by the geography of their physical settings and local institutional and economic processes such as the investment in satellite settlements around Chengdu. As a result of these rapid and dispersed growth patterns, all four regions are encountering resource constraints including water availability, loss of agricultural land, and access to appropriately-configured locations for green spaces and infrastructure. The long-term livability of these cities, and their viability as engines for economic growth, may depend on their institutional capacities to manage shortages of key natural resources.