The assessment of transport impacts on land use: practical uses in strategic planning

This article, focusing upon the UK, examines the relevance to strategic planning of methods to estimate the impacts of transport policy on land use processes. The study applied three differing techniques for forecasting these impacts to a common study area, and assessed planners' views on each. The methods comprised a Delphi survey, a simple static land use model, and a linked land-use/transport model. It was found that many factors influenced planners' views on appropriate methods. In general, comprehensive-modelling methods could provide a tool suitable for the needs of planners, but only if the underpinnings of the model were clear.