Daniel Jonsson

Urban ecosystems and sustainable urban development-analysing and assessing interacting systems in the Stockholm region

In order to build competence for sustainability analysis and assessment of urban systems, it is seen as essential to build on models representing urban form, landuse and transportation, urban metabolism, as well as ecological processes. This type of analysis of interacting sub-systems requires an advanced model integration platform, yet open for learning and for further development. Moreover, since the aim is to increase urban experience with ecosystem management in the wide sense, the platform needs to be open and easily available, with high visualisation capacity. For this purpose, the LEAM model was applied to the Stockholm Region and two potential future scenarios were developed, resulting from alternative policies. The scenarios differed widely and the dense urban development of Scenario Compact could be visualised, destroying much of the Greenstructure of Stockholm, while Scenario Urban Nature steered the development more to outer suburbs and some sprawl. For demonstration of the need for further development of biodiversity assessment models, a network model tied to a prioritised ecological profile was applied and altered by the scenarios. It could be shown that the Greenstructure did not support this profile very well. Thus, there is a need for dynamic models for negotiations, finding alternative solutions and interacting with other models. The LEAM Stockholm case study is planned to be further developed, to interact with more advanced transport and land use models, as well as analysing energy systems and urban water issues. This will enable integrated sustainability analysis and assessment of complex urban systems, for integration in the planning process in Stockholm as well as for comparative sustainability studies between different cities, with the goal to build more sustainable urban systems and to increase urban experiences in ecosystem management.

Indirect Effects to Include in Strategic Environmental Assessments of Transport Infrastructure Investments

Abstract Indirect effects are important considerations when making consequence analyses in general and in strategic environmental assessments in particular of potential transport solutions and infrastructure plans. The primary objective of this paper is to emphasize the need for a deeper understanding of the long‐term system effects of investments in transport infrastructure with a focus on the structuring effects that roads and railways have on society, e.g. altered transport patterns, altered settlement structures and changes in use of the built environment. Special attention is given to the following potential indirect effects: increased total transport volume, increased share of private motorists and truck transport, increased urban sprawl, and increased energy use in buildings. The conditions that determine the power of the effects are discussed and a number of key factors to be considered in transport infrastructure planning, especially in strategic environmental assessments, are suggested. Since many indirect effects emerge over time, an extended time perspective is of essence. Therefore, scenario techniques may be useful when analysing indirect effects in transport planning processes.

The Usefulness of Transport Models in Swedish Planning Practice

Abstract This paper presents some experience from using transport models in Swedish planning practice. First we outline three recent examples of planning settings in which transport models have been put to extensive use. For the Swedish ‘national’ transport plan for the period 2010–2021, which was recently finished, the national transport model SAMPERS was used to compute costs and benefits for many investment projects. The second example concerns the ‘regional’ plan for Stockholm, where a similar but less detailed model, LuTRANS, was used to investigate different transport and land use scenarios. The third example discusses a recent study on the feasibility of introducing congestion charges in Gothenburg, where both a fixed demand approach and SAMPERS were used. Furthermore, the paper tries to help identify what model development can do to help improve the production of decision support through modelling. We argue that effectiveness and efficiency are key. The first is characterized by making sure that the right things are done and that they are done right. Efficiency, which is less often discussed in the literature, is framed in terms of doing things on time and doing them only once. The managing organization around a national model system can play an important role in helping users avoid redundant work. It is also a good idea to resist the temptation to use up all improvements in computing power for additional model features. There are many worthwhile analyses that are never done because of time constraints.

Reconciling User Benefit and Time-Geography-Based Individual Accessibility Measures

This paper presents a dynamic discrete choice model of activity scheduling that features classic time-geography properties within a microeconomic framework. We present results that show how the model can produce accessibilities that form space-time prisms, while retaining the properties of traditional measures based on consumer surplus in the form of logsums. The main features of the model are that it handles time-space constraints, travel time uncertainty, and endogenous trip chaining in one consistent framework. The resulting accessibility respects the individuals time budget and fixed activities. The dynamic discrete choice framework makes possible estimation of behavioural parameters using well-known methods. Some of the remaining computational challenges are discussed. The final section provides some examples of the policy analysis possibilities provided by a model of this kind.