The practice of integrated land use and transportation modeling has improved greatly over the past decade. The use of these integrated models has steadily increased among U.S. metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and more recently among state departments of transportation. This paper examines the secondary growth impacts of large, urban-edge developments within an integrated model to determine the existence and characteristics of induced land development (sometimes referred to as path dependency in the modeled land development process). The Sacramento MEPLAN model is used to simulate the impact of large, urban-edge, basic sector developments on overall and industry-specific employment in the subject zone over a modeled 25-year period. Four types of basic sector development are considered: office/service, industrial/manufacturing, retail, and government. Ten sizes of each type of development were modeled, and each simulated development shares a common location and year of construction/occupancy. The study found that: 1) secondary employment draw was substantial for all sizes and types of projects; 2) certain industries produced much larger secondary draws than others; 3) secondary growth increased with the size of the development, and continued to have impact though all future modeled years; and 4) the relationship between initial development size and secondary growth is non-linear within each development type. This significant, persistent secondary draw suggests that this model manifests a key characteristic of path dependency in the location and building decisions within the model (i.e. a relatively small shift in basic employment can create new development paths). These findings yield recommendations for incorporating this work into integrated modeling research and practice.
Samenvatting