Cincinnati Streetcar Feasibility Study

Author : Elad Mokadi
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 73 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (755 download)

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Download or read book Modeling the Future Impact of Cincinnati's Proposed Streetcar on Urban Land Use Changes written by Elad Mokadi and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The construction of Cincinnati's streetcar system, which has been planned since the year 2007, will supposedly begin during the fall of 2011. The $128-million project is intended to increase connectivity between the city's two major employment centers, and foster economic growth in its urban core. Ever since its inception, the project has instigated controversies in the local community regarding its future impacts on urban growth and redevelopment. The project supporters argue that it would increase commercial and retail activities, and boost property values; opponents insist that the system will be underutilized and redundant, senselessly wasting scarce public resources. This study explores the impact of the proposed streetcar system on land use transitions, by employing an advanced Geographic Information System (GIS) based land use change model. In an attempt to reconstruct the major arguments behind the public debate, the study models land use changes as represented by three scenarios: (1) the supporters' narrative, (2) the opponents' narrative, and (3) a baseline scenario which does not include the streetcar line. Since land use changes are reliable indicators of redevelopment processes, the study has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of urban redevelopment dynamics and increase public involvement in planning processes, both in Cincinnati and in similar-scale cities. The study first had identified the streetcar supporters and opponents' arguments and quantified them into various spatial criteria. It then incorporated those criteria into a Cellular Automata (CA) - Markov Chains model, to generate future land use distribution raster images. Finally, the model outcomes were evaluated using spatial-statistical analyses. The study sheds a new light on the escalating dispute between the streetcar opponents and its supporters. The results indicate that supporters and opponents' scenarios beget distinct results in terms of land use changes. Under both scenarios, however, the streetcar establishment would impact its surrounding area to some extent.