Over the last decades, many fully integrated land use and transport models have been developed, but few have seen operation in practice. Recent developments in computer software provide considerable potential for creating a user friendly, interactive, dynamic, easy to learn, visually simulating computer environment which could increase the community's acceptance of computer models. An educational tool for urban land use - transport interaction - CityPlan has been developed to assist in the education of students, transport engineers, urban planners, and the community in understanding the complexities of the urban system. Unlike the other land use/transport models which pursue modelling precision, CityPlan is designed as an educational tool that is user friendly, interactive, and educational, and that provides the insights into qualitative behaviour of the system and feedback and interactions among its parts. By focussing on user friendliness, CityPlan makes urban land use - transport - environment models much more accessible to a wide variety of users. This paper focuses on the user interface and the educational function of the package. (A)
Abstract