Caught (up) in traffic

Home » 2018 » April » 14

Daily Archives: April 14, 2018

SimCity-like tool for impact analysis?

There’s this nice article about a tool for transport/traffic impact assessment (TIA):

Peters, A. (2018) This SimCity-like tool lets urban planners see the potential impact of their ideas, http://www.fastcompany.com, https://www.fastcompany.com/40548501/this-sim-city-like-tool-lets-urban-planners-the-potential-impact-of-their-ideas [Last accessed: 4/12/2018]

I played SimCity before with the early versions of the game. My friends and I thought it had the potential as a tool for transport planning given the visuals and the features for building cities out of scratch. We even tried out some concepts like transit oriented development (TOD) to see how these can be “simulated” in the game. With other tools like Google Earth and Street View, it is possible to create new tools or apps for rapid determination of impact areas. The immediate or primary impact areas of developments are spelled out in the guidelines published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) so these can be incorporated in a tool or app. This can be a good project for development and application locally. Perhaps this can be developed for use by local governments and practitioners preparing TIAs.