A heuristic method for land-use plan
generation in planning support systems
Theo Arentze, Aloys Borgers and Harry Timmermans
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Outline
• Background and objectives
• The proposed method
• Illustration
• Conclusions and future research
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Background
• Urban land-use planning models can be used to generate
plan alternatives
• The models consist of:
– Some zoning system (i.e., a grid of cells)
– A suitability function
– An allocation algorithm
• The suitability function is not well-suited to evaluate spatial
configurations of facilities (e.g., schools, shopping centers)
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Objective
• To develop and explore a method to combine locationallocation models and land-use models for land-use plan
generation
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Location-allocation models
• Characteristics of user-attracting facility systems:
– Users choose and travel to facility locations
– Performance of the facility network depends on demand attracted
• The problem considered in discrete-space models:
– Find p locations among n candidate locations that maximize a
given objective function (within constraints)
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Combining the models
•
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•
•
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Retail facilities
Location-allocation models
School facilities
Interchange heuristic
Green facilities
Etc.
Housing high density
Housing medium density
Housing low density
Land-use models
Industry
Nature
Swapping heuristic
Etc.
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The Swapping heuristic
Initial allocation
Sij   X   D
j
ik
k
j
ij '
score of distance from cell i to
nearest cell with land-use j’
j'
score of land characteristic k of cell i
for land-use j
Optimize allocation
Compare
U ij  Sij   Aijj'
j'
score of the adjacency to land-use j’
for land-use j in cell i
Swap?
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The Interchange heuristic
Step 1. Choose a macro-strategy
Centralized
Semi-centralized
Decentralized
Step 2. Given a macro-strategy, find optimal locations
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Step 2. Given a macro-strategy, find
optimal locations
Random initial solution
Evaluate substitutions
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Example of a maximum-covering solution
Housing density is
demand weight
Potential housing has
average demand weight
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Integrating the two heuristics
• Allocate Facility 1
Initial
Interchange
Choice options reduce
• Allocate Facility 2
Initial
Interchange
Information increases
• …….
• Allocate area-type land-uses
Initial
Swap
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Centralized
Illustration
Semi-centralized
De-centralized
Trade-off:
Economic versus
Accessibility objectives
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Conclusions
• The new method integrates the Interchange and Swapping
heuristic
• Suitability of land-uses is evaluated:
– On a cell-basis for area-type landuses
– On a location-network basis for facility-type land-uses
• The distinction between macro-strategies enables
generating meaningfull plan alternatives for multi-criteria
analysis
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Future research
• Refining the objective function of the location-allocation
model
• Incorporating the planning of the transport system
• Simulating behavior of users under land-use plan
conditions