The simulation of future land use can provide decision support for urban planners and decision makers, which is important for sustainable urban development. Using a cellular automata-random forest ...model, we considered two scenarios to predict intra-land use changes in Kumamoto City from 2018 to 2030: an unconstrained development scenario, and a planning-constrained development scenario that considers disaster-related factors. The random forest was used to calculate the transition probabilities and the importance of driving factors, and cellular automata were used for future land use prediction. The results show that disaster-related factors greatly influence land vacancy, while urban planning factors are more important for medium high-rise residential, commercial, and public facilities. Under the unconstrained development scenario, urban land use tends towards spatially disordered growth in the total amount of steady growth, with the largest increase in low-rise residential areas. Under the planning-constrained development scenario that considers disaster-related factors, the urban land area will continue to grow, albeit slowly and with a compact growth trend. This study provides planners with information on the relevant trends in different scenarios of land use change in Kumamoto City. Furthermore, it provides a reference for Kumamoto City’s future post-disaster recovery and reconstruction planning.
Compact cities are widely used in urban planning in Japan due to the following benefits: efficient land use, reduction in the transport network and reliance on mass transport, low emissions, etc. ...However, Compactness often means high density. In disaster-resistant Japan, whether the compact city form can effectively respond to disasters is needed further discussion. In the Kumamoto City Master Plan, 15 local hubs have been planned to promote the development of the compact city. In this study, 15 local hubs are selected as the research objects. Moreover, the entropy method was chosen to evaluate the disaster prevention capability. The results show that disaster risk is high and the disaster prevention ability is weak in the central urban area, which is likely to cause greater losses when the disaster occurs. The local hubs that are far away from the city centre also have the weak disaster prevention due to the lack of disaster prevention facilities, while some hub areas are more capable of disaster prevention despite the high risk of disasters. Therefore, in the post-disaster reconstruction plan, it is recommended making a focus on the low-risk and disaster resistant areas. At the same time, the cancellation of hubs with high risk and weak disaster prevention needs to be further discussed.
Bicycle is widely used in Japan by people of all age groups in daily usage, which may significantly ease traffic congestion. Responding to the cyclists increasing, the method to assess the quality of ...bicycle travel become necessary. Previous studies reported several approaches to obtain evaluation methods. However, cycleway evaluation in Japan is still far behind the evaluation methods developed in Europe or America. This paper concentrated on familiarizing readers with two methods for evaluating the quality of bicycle facilities and then presenting some proposals of cycleway evaluation in Japan referencing to these two methods. The first method, Bicycle Compatibility Index (BCI), is used to evaluate the road environment for cycling according to the road characteristics by statistical analysis. The second method, Bicycle Level of Service (BLOS), also represents an evaluation of safety for bicyclists. Both of the above methods offered equations of comfort and safety perceptions of bicyclists according to cycling environments. By introducing these methods in combination, this paper enables the readers to maximize the comparative advantages of both BCI and BLOS. The comparison includes sensitivity of variables and the development of both methods. Then we applied BCI and BLOS to evaluate the target roadways in Kumamoto, Japan.
Cities with lakes must balance the relationship between development and preservation of the natural landscape. Tall buildings are important in urban development, while landscape destruction and ...visual pollution caused by tall buildings have attracted more attention. Many qualitative or quantitative restrictions for building height have been designated along lakefronts. However, it is unclear whether the public accepts these restricted heights. This study aimed to assess the effects of building height and lake width on public preferences for lake landscapes. Two experiments were designed with two common lake scenarios. Three levels of building height crossed with three levels of lake width were presented in nine synthetic lake landscapes in each experiment, which were assessed by 50 participants using a psychological evaluation tool, namely the Affect Grid. The results showed that when lake width was within the Close View range with only trees on the other side of the lake, a lake landscape with the heights of buildings' visible part moderately less than average height of the trees contour was preferred over rigidly restricting that all buildings be barely visible. For lake landscapes with mountains in the background, it was found that a lake-wide threshold existed between 0.6 km and 1.8 km. Using this threshold, the Medium View range could be reclassified so that a lake width within this range might correspond to a particular type of building height restriction. These findings provide a reference for urban planners and suggest that lakes can be categorized on the basis of lake width and, in this category, building height can be restricted more appropriately.
The built environment and walking are hot topics in human settlement environment and health. It is essential for both built environment and walking research to clarify the knowledge base, development ...context, and cooperation network, and to explore the cutting-edge hot spots and development trends. We collected research data from the Web of Science core collection database. This study used analysis techniques including country and institution cooperation networks, keyword co-occurrences, burst keywords, reference co-citations, and cluster analysis to systematically analyze the built environment and walking research. The study found that research on built environment and walking was developed in the United States, Australia, and Canada. Then, it was carried out in Asian countries. Current research on the built environment and walking has multiple research themes. Among them, walkability is a common content covered by various research themes. Research based on street view environment is the latest hot research and there are still a lot of gaps in combining traditional topics with it. This research provides new directions and theoretical references for the built environment and walking research scholars and policymakers.
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