City Planning Using Integrated Urban Modelling

This paper explores the use of weighted space syntax models to contribute to the process of integrated urban planning for Jeddah as part of a major planning project in the Saudi Arabia. The Municipality of Jeddah commissioned the production of an integrated suite of planning documents. These plans coordinate Strategic, Sub-Regional, Structural and Local plans across a citywide region and aim to provide a framework for sustainable urban growth and development over the next 20 years. This paper focuses on the space syntax methodologies used to aid urban planners to develop the Structure Plan and builds on the research used to develop the SubRegional Plan (Karimi et al, 2015). The Structure Plan studied how the urban structure of the city could accommodate the growth of population by about three million over the next 20 years. This included developing and testing a centres strategy to distribute population, employment and supporting facilities along with a public transport strategy for the city. For analysing the potential and requirements of the city, an Integrated Urban Model (IUM) was constructed to combine the spatial network with land use, population, employment and public transport. The aim of this model was to test the impact of changes in the distribution of population and employment. It also allowed the assessment of public transport alignments. The IUM is a key design tool for planning and optimising the relationships between population, employment and public transport. It was also used to provide a benchmarking methodology to compare options. Because the model links people to employment using the spatial network and public transport, the performance of options can be expressed in terms of benefits to the city’s population. Proceedings of the 11th Space Syntax Symposium CITY PLANNING USING INTEGRATED URBAN MODELLING Jeddah Structure Plan 37.2