Klaus Spiekermann

Accessibility and Economic Development in Europe

VICKERMAN R., SPIEKERMANN K. and WEGENER M. (1999) Accessibility and economic development in Europe, Reg. Studies 33 , 1-15. There is continuing debate on the role of transport infrastructure and changes in accessibility on regional economic development. The emphasis in recent European Union policy on the development of trans-European Networks (TENs) provides a focus for a re-evaluation. Much of the debate assumes that improvements in accessibility will lead to economic development and, by implication, to greater cohesion. This paper identifies some of the major difficulties in defining a simple measure of accessibility for use in such studies and proceeds to evaluate new measures of time-space and accessibility surfaces which allow for greater disaggregation at a spatial and sectoral level. An assessment of the implications for regional development in the EU is then made. The conclusions cast doubt on the ability of TENs to promote greater convergence in both accessibility and economic development. VICKE...

Microsimulation of Land Use

The project ILUMASS (Integrated Land-Use Modelling and Transportation System Simulation) aims at embedding a microscopic dynamic simulation model of urban traffic flows into a comprehensive model system incorporating changes of land use, the resulting changes in transport demand, and the impacts of transport on the environment. The land-use component of ILUMASS will be based on the land-use parts of an existing urban simulation model, but is to be microscopic like the transport parts of ILUMASS. Microsimulation modules will include models of demographic development, household formation, firm lifecycles, residential and non-residential construction, labour mobility on the regional labour market and household mobility on the regional housing market. These modules will be closely linked with the models of daily activity patterns and travel and goods movements modeled in the transport parts of ILUMASS developed by other partners of the project team. The design of the land-use model takes into account that the collection of individual micro data (i.e. data which because of their micro location can be associated with individual buildings or small groups of buildings) or the retrieval of individual micro data from administrative registers for planning purposes is neither possible nor, for privacy reasons, desirable. The land-use model therefore works with synthetic micro data which can be retrieved from generally accessible aggregate data.

Modelling Urban Sustainabilty

The objective of the EU research project PROPOLIS (Planning and Research of Policies for Land Use and Transport for Increasing Urban Sustainability) is to assess urban strategies and to demonstrate their long-term effect in European cities. To reach this goal, a comprehensive framework of methodologies including integrated land use, transport and environmental models as well as indicator, evaluation and presentation systems has been developed. Sustainable development is viewed as comprising the environmental, socio-cultural and economic dimension. Thirty-five key indicators were defined to measure the three dimensions of sustainability, such as air pollution, consumption of natural resources, quality of open space, population exposure to air pollution and noise, equity and opportunities and economic benefits from transport and land use. Indicator values are derived from state-of-the-art urban land use and transport models. A number of additional modules, including a justice evaluation module, an economic evaluation module and a GIS-based raster module, were developed and integrated to provide further indicator values. Both multicriteria and cost-benefit analysis methods are used to consistently evaluate the impacts of the policies. The environmental and social dimensions of sustainability are measured using multicriteria analysis for the evaluation of the indicators, whereas cost-benefit analysis is used for the economic dimension. The modelling and evaluation system is currently being implemented in seven European urban regions: Bilbao (Spain), Brussels (Belgium), Dortmund (Germany), Helsinki (Finland), Inverness (Scotland), Naples (Italy) and Vicenza (Italy). A large number of policies are being tested with the modelling and evaluation system in the seven urban regions. Policies investigated are land use policies, transport infrastructure policies, transport regulation and pricing policies and combinations of these. Besides a common set of policies examined in all seven urban regions, also city-specific local policies are being assessed in each urban region. The first part of the paper introduces the methodology and the model system developed. The second part presents first results of the policy testing and evaluation. The paper concludes with reflections on how successful strategies to enhance the long-term sustainability of urban regions can be developed.

The regional impact of the channel tunnel: Qualitative and quantitative analysis

Abstract The paper addresses the question of how different types of regions mill be affected by the development of a major new transport infrastructure such as the Channel Tunnel. It summarizes a study on the regional impacts of the Channel Tunnel throughout the European Union (EU). The research design combined qualitative methods of futures exploration employing 13 regional case studies with quantitative forecasting techniques using the MEPLAN transport and economic model. The paper presents the methodology and major results of the two approaches with respect to the impacts of the Channel Tunnel on transport flows and regional development in Europe and draws conclusions for transport and regional policy of the EU. The paper demonstrates that the removal of a bottleneck like the Channel Tunnel does not necessarily induce economic gains in all adjacent regions. Much more important for regional economic development than the reduction of transport costs are the image to be a region well integrated into the E...

Environmental Feedback in Urban Models

ABSTRACT Most urban modelers have for a long time ignored ecological aspects of urban development and have only recently shifted their attention from economic to environmental effects of land use and transport policies. Existing land-use transport (LT) models are being augmented by environmental submodels to become land-use transport environment (LTE) models. However, the first pioneering efforts to extend LT models to LTE models have concentrated on environmental effects of land use and transport and have ignored the opposite direction, the feedback of environmental quality on the location behavior of households and firms and so indirectly also on travel patterns. The reason may be that environmental feedback is difficult to identify and requires a higher spatial resolution than zone-based land-use transport models. This article summarizes empirical studies and expert interviews on the impact of environmental quality on the location behavior of households and firms, shows how environmental feedback can be implemented in urban models, compares zone-based indicators with raster-based indicators produced by spatially disaggregate environmental submodels, and draws conclusions for the implementation of environmental feedback in future urban models.

Nachhaltige Raumentwicklung: Konzept für ein interdisziplinäres Forschungsprogramm

KurzfassungRäumliche Aspekte nachhaltiger Entwicklung werden ein Schlüsselthema der gesellschaftlichen Diskussion in den kommenden Jahrzehnten darstellen. Zugleich bestehen jedoch gravierende Forschungsdefizite im Hinblick auf die Wechselwirkungen zwischen menschlichen Aktivitäten im Raum und ihren ökonomischen, sozialen und ökologischen Folgen. Diese Fragen können offenkundig nicht mit einzelwissenschaftlichen Forschungsansätzen beantwortet werden; sie erfordern einen ganzheitlichen Forschungsansatz. Der Artikel stellt ein Konzept für ein solches interdisziplinäres Forschungsprogramm vor.AbstractSpatial aspects of spatial development will become a key question of social debate in the coming decades. However, substantial research deficits exist with respect to the interaction between human activities in space and their economic, social and ecological impacts. Obviously, these issues cannot be resolved by individual disciplines, but require a holistic research approach. The article presents an outline of such an interdisciplinary research programme.

Transport and communications and regional development: new potentials and challenges

The expert contributors illustrate that sources of regional competitiveness are strongly linked with spatially observable yet increasingly flexible realities, and include building advanced and efficient transport, communications and energy networks, changing urban and rural landscapes, and creating strategic and forward-looking competitiveness policies. They investigate long-term interactions between regional competitiveness and urban mobility, as well as the connections that link global sustainability with local technological and institutional innovations, and the intrinsic diversity of spatially rooted innovation processes. A prospective analysis on networks and innovation infrastructure is presented, global environmental issues such as climate change and energy are explored, and new policy perspectives – relevant world-wide – are prescribed.

THE CHANNEL TUNNEL AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT: COMBINING QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE METHODS.

Until recently, the Channel with its ferry services presented a major transport barrier to free movement of passengers and goods in Europe. If through the Channel Tunnel this bottleneck is removed, significant impacts on regional development at either end can be expected. However, many questions are not easily answered: In which ways will different types of regions and different sectors in those regions be affected by the development of such a major new transport infrastructure? Will the impacts be limited to the regions directly adjacent to the Tunnel exits, or will they be spread out over a larger area? Will they be more pronounced at the British or at the Continental end? Will the Channel Tunnel benefit mostly the already highly industrialized and urbanized regions in central Europe and so increase concentration of activities and hence the spatial disparities in Europe, or will it tend to equalize the accessibility surface in Europe and hence have a decentralization effect?