Relation Between Land Use and Transportation Planning in the Scope of Smart Growth Strategies: Case Study of Denizli, Turkey

Abstract

In the decision-making process of planning residential areas in developing countries, importance of the commercial areas and need for a sustainable urban transportation infrastructure have generally been ignored based on several sociopolitical reasons. Meanwhile, decision-making periods of location choice and determining areal densities are conducted without quantitative spatial/technical analyses. Those urban matters bring along new planning paradigms like smart growth (SG) and new urbanism. SG is a land use planning paradigm which indicates that traffic problems should be minimized by transit alternatives, effective demand management and providing a balance between land use and transportation planning. This study aims to apply SG strategies to the land use planning process and evaluate the accuracy of land use planning decisions in the perspective of sustainable transportation. In order to reveal the effects of land use planning decisions on the available transportation infrastructure, two scenarios are investigated for 2030. In the first scenario "do nothing" option is considered, while the residential area densities and trip generation rates are regulated based on SG strategies in the second scenario. The results showed that the land use and traffic impact analyses should simultaneously be conducted before land use configuration process.