Bringing urban land-change simulation to the next level (SILAR)

It is widely accepted that spatial planning is the key policy activity aimed at managing the morphology and use of the built environment. Spatial planning systems are commonly multi-level, with local land-use planning often responsible for translating strategic goals set by regional and national authorities into a binding code that regulates Urban Form (physical components of urban environments such as buildings, roads and open spaces) and Function (activities and functions of urban environments commonly regulated via zoning). The tools used to set the code vary widely across Europe, however, their diversity and character are surprisingly underresearched and, therefore, poorly understood.

This lack of understanding hinders the progress of the ongoing digitalisation of planning – a prominent trend among European planning systems. The digitalisation trend shows the general efforts of countries to simplify planning processes, improve outcome quality, strengthen decision-making reasoning, improve enforcement efficiency and increase process transparency via the use of digital technologies and geospatial data. However, the absence of systematic standardisation of land-use tools prevents the further integration of planning into spatial simulations – an essential component of planning digitalisation.

The increasing availability of digital plan data in the form of downloadable vector data provides promising opportunities for implementing detailed Form and Function regulations in urban land-change simulations. The digitalisation and integration of digital plan data offer new opportunities to overcome the drawbacks of using traditional 2-D land-use plans to regulate the three-dimensional built environment. As theories on European land-use planning are lacking, the necessary basis for a targeted advancement of practice is missing.