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.