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Residential development: a microspatial allocation model

University of British Columbia

The focus of this study was the development and testing of a micro-spatial supply model which could explain and predict the allocation of residential development to subareas within a region. This involved a three step process. The first step was a review of the literature to determine what criteria were considered important in the location of residential development. Two types of location criteria were found to be important. The first of these criteria were intuitive accessibility measures used in other modelling studies. The second type of criteria were potential supply criteria suggested as important by surveys of residential developers. The second step involved the measuring and testing of various potential supply and accessibility measures to see which were important in explaining the allocation of residential development within the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD). From these tests a microspatial allocation function was derived which could be tested in a large scale urban model of the GVRD. The third step involved incorporating the microspatial allocation function into the supply sub-model of a large urban model and running the model for four simulated years. The simulated data was then compared with actual data before and after the inclusion of the allocation function. Finally, the results of the tests were compared to similar studies which had compared simulated data with actual data. The test results indicate that approximately 50% of single family development and approximately 75% of multiple family development could be explained by potential supply measures. Accessibility measures were of' little significance in explaining single family development, and explained only about 10% of multiple family development. The results of testing the microspatial allocation functions in a large urban model were not as encouraging as the explanatory tests. Generally, the results of tests which compared actual data with simulated data indicate that the increase in performance with the microspatial allocation function was marginal. However, compared to similar studies the results are acceptable. In general, the study indicates that behavioural studies of the role played by developers combined with analytical models of this behaviour may provide considerable insight into the nature of the development process. It also lends strong supporting evidence to the suggestion that government organizations have been effective in allocating growth by their servicing and zoning policies.

Text

2010-02-22

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/20735

Business Administration - Urban Land Economics

University of British Columbia

Graduate