1. Evaluating the future: forecasting urban development using the urbansim land use model in el paso, tx.
Quinn P. Korbulic

2. - Background
The El Paso MPO has invested in expanding their modeling capabilities to include land use modeling.
They chose to explore UrbanSim.
NMSU Spatial Applications & Research Center
Developed portions of initial UrbanSim database
Conducted UrbanSim Pilot Study.
- To expand their already extensive modeling capabilities the El Paso MPO has Partnered with NMSU to explore the use of UrbanSim. - - NMSU’s role thus far has been to develop portions of the initial database and to conduct a pilot study which we will talk about today.

3. - Study Objectives Objectives Develop & Test UrbanSim Database
Run UrbanSim from 1997 to 2027 for two scenarios.
Trend (Business as Usual) Scenario
Urban Growth Boundary Scenario
Convert the results to GIS format.
Compare geographic variables from the output of UrbanSim for the two scenarios.

4. Add picture of EP MPO study area with the Pilot study area

5. Study Area
Area: sq km
Approximate Pop.
92,086
(2000 Census)

6. UrbanSim UrbanSim Multi-agent microsimulation based behavioral model.
(Wadell, 2002)
Reflects the individual choices of:
Households
Businesses/employees
Developers
Governments
and their interaction with the real estate market over time.

8. UrbanSim - Exogenous data, e.g. economic and population forecasts
- Travel Data, e.g. travel time to CBD, general travel times
Demographic and Economic: Controls agents entering and leaving the
system. Agents entering the system are regulated by control totals
from exogenous data.
- Households and Jobs: will they relocate? Yes/No
Driven by relocation rates (exogenous data) for jobs by employment
sector and households by household type.
Households, Jobs, and Development Projects: determines the probability
that an agent will choose a specific location. Monte Carlo Simulation
chooses the location for each agent.
Updates land prices annually after all development and market
activity are completed.

9. UrbanSim Data UrbanSim Datastore: 58 related tables. Primary Tables:
All data necessary to run UrbanSim
Primary Tables:
Gridcells
Jobs
Households
The 58 tables include all data needed to run UrbanSim.
Primary Tables are Gridcells, Jobs, and Housholds. Simple Right?

10. Application of GIS
The application of GIS played a critical role in the development of the UrbanSim database:
Tables:
Connected to space through GIS – space alone isn’t enough
Attributes – provide a connection to what exists on the ground
Otherwise, we’d just have location, not the what, when, why, or maybe even how.

11. Gridcells Gridcells: 8054 150m x 150m 31 Attribute Fields e.g. Slope
Land Value
Sqft by use
zoning …
The size of the gridcells is arbitrary.

12. Jobs & Households Households: 30,595 Household Attributes Persons
Workers
Age of Head
Income
Children
Cars …
Jobs: 16,185
Jobs Attributes
Employment Sector
Location

13. UrbanSim and Land Use Policy
The Development Constraints Table.
User defined development rules, i.e. zoning.
Can take into account any variable in the gridcells table, for example
Plan type (zoning)
Building Square footage
Proximity to Highways
Etc…
Mandatory Fields
Min/Max Housing Units
Min/Max Commercial Sqft
Min/Max Industrial Sqft
How does UrbanSim address land use policy?

14. Analysis Run UrbanSim Trend Run: UGB Run
with no significant changes to development constraints table.
UGB Run
with UGB introduced into the development constraints table.

15. Modeling Uncertainty
“Essentially all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.”
George Box, University of Wisconsin.
Before we look at the results of the study it is important to note that there is some uncertainty in modeling and in the future. But in beginning to use UrbanSim we can look to the advances in urban and economic theory and computing technology and do our best to reduce error and provide the model with the best data available so that we have reduced uncertainty to acceptable levels.

16. 1997 Baseyear
2027 Trend Forecast

17. 2027 Trend Forecast
2027 UGB Forecast

18. 2027 Trend Total Density
2027 UGB Total Density

19. 1997 TAZ Population
2027 TAZ Population

20. 1997 TAZ Jobs
2020 TAZ Jobs

21. More Scenarios Floodzones: No Development Allowed.
Using FEMA 100year Flood data, development was disallowed in floodzones.
Planned Development: Add 1000 housing units.
To begin to accommodate for BRAC troop influx.
Three Scenarios Combined:
No Development in Floodzones
Planned Development
Open Castner Range to Development

22. 1997 Trend
2027 Floodzone

23. 1997 Trend
2027 Planned Development

24. 1997 Trend
2027 Three Scenarios

25. Conclusions
Overall, we found that the Urban Growth Boundary did restrict new urban development.
Also, it is a fairly simple process to develop new land use scenarios and to run them one at a time or together
GIS played a non-trivial role in the development of the database, and display of the results.

26. Questions?