Case Study: Developing and Applying UrbanSim, a System for Simulating Urban Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Impacts

UrbanSim is a tool for use by urban planners and others to help predict future patterns of urban development under different possible input scenarios, over periods of twenty or more years. It should support deliberation and debate on such issues as building new transit systems or freeways, or changing zoning or economic incentives, as well as on broader issues such as sustainable, livable cities, economic vitality, social equity, and environmental preservation. We want stakeholders to be able to consider different scenarios – packages of possible policies and investments – and then, based on these alternatives, model the resulting patterns of urban growth and redevelopment, of transportation usage, and of resource consumption and other environmental impacts.