Smart Growth Equity Calculator (Beta Version)
  • Project Description
  • Directions
  • Press
  • About Us
Selected Urban Quality Metric
  • Vehicle Miles Traveled
  • Housing Affordability
  • Transportation Affordability
  • Housing + Transportation Affordability
  • Dwelling Density
  • Carbon Emissions
  • Pedestrian Collisions
  • Population Density
  • Jobs Density
  • Jobs Accessibility
  • Walkability
  • WalkScore
  • Walking Percent
  • Cardiovascular Disease
  • Obesity
PERFORMANCE LEGEND
GOOD MEDIUM POOR
Selected Block Groups (0)
  • Vehicle Miles Traveled
    (per household)
    N/A
  • Housing Affordability N/A
  • Transportation Affordability N/A
  • Housing + Transportation Affordability N/A
  • Dwelling Density
    (units per acre)
    N/A
  • Carbon Emissions
    (lbs per household)
    N/A
  • Pedestrian Collisions
    (per 100k walkers)
    N/A
  • Population Density
    (persons per acre)
    N/A
  • Jobs Density
    (jobs per acre)
    N/A
  • Jobs Accessibility N/A
  • walkability
    (intersection density)
    n/a
  • walkscore n/a
  • walking percent n/a
  • cardiovascular disease
    (percentile)
    n/a
  • obesity
    (percentage obese)
    n/a

Press

  • City Is Poised to Back Down on Plan to Increase Height Limit - Again
  • KPBS Interview

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Project Description

Developed by Dr. Bruce Appleyard (bappleyard@mail.sdsu.edu) and research assistants Chris Allen and Eduardo Cordova, this new online smart growth & livability calculator prototype is designed to help practitioners and researchers meet a variety of planning and design challenges related to corridors, station areas, and complete streets, climate action planning and providing affordable housing near transit in support of active and sustainable travel. This smart growth & livability calculator builds on work developing The Handbook for Building Livable Transit Corridors and the associated Livability Calculator, sponsored by the National Academies of Sciences' Transportation Research Board.

In the future, this calculator will be designed to help plan the future of autonomous vehicles, as outlines in this publication on a new transportation/land use performance measurement framework. for now, this prototype covers San Diego, CA and San Mateo, CA, but we have the necessary data for California and the entire us.

Special thanks to Geoff Boeing, PhD, for his advice and assistance on this calculator.

See funding information here.

About Us

Bruce Appleyard, PhD
bappleyard@mail.sdsu.edu

Dr. Appleyard is an Associate Professor in City & Regional Planning and Public Administration at SDSU, with doctoral training in geo-spatial analysis, behavioral economics, econometrics, and applied transportation and land use policy analysis. Dr. Appleyard is also an Associate Director in the Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age (HDMA) research center, and the Assistant Director of the Active Transportation Research Center, both based at SDSU. Dr. Appleyard has led several research efforts examining the relationship between public transport, land use, socio-economics, and a variety of outcomes related to public health, sustainability, economic vitality, and equity.

Dr. Appleyard was the co-pi for the development of the Handbook for Building Livable Transit Corridors and the associated Livability Calculator, sponsored by the National Academies of Sciences’ Transit Cooperative Research Project (TCRP). This required extensive geo-spatial and econometric, mixed method analysis of all transit stations and corridors throughout the us. Dr. Appleyard has also been the project lead for the development of the sustainable transportation calculator for the smart mobility framework implementation project for the state of California.

Geoff Boeing, PhD

Geoff Boeing is an Assistant Professor of urban informatics and planning in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University. He is a faculty affiliate of the Network Science Institute and the Global Resilience Institute as well as a core faculty member of the NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks, Northeastern's center for digital humanities and computational social science. He received his PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. His work revolves around urban form, spatial networks, and data science. Recent projects have focused on 1, the nature and character of urban street networks around the world and 2, how data availability shapes our understanding of housing affordability. He developed and maintains the OSMnx street network modeling software.

Chris Allen

Chris Allen is a PhD candidate in the department of geography at SDSU, where he focuses on using geospatial techniques and new data sources to examine well-being in urban areas. prior to entering the PhD program, Chris worked as a software verification engineer in the avionics industry and completed an MA in urban history at San Diego State. As a research assistant at san diego state, he has worked primarily on projects to collect and analyze social media data to study topics ranging from disease outbreak to disaster management. in this role, Chris’s duties have included database administration, web dashboard creation (both server-side and client-side programming), and geospatial analysis.

Eduardo Cordova

Eduardo Cordova graduated with distinction in his major from San Diego State University with a degree in geography with an emphasis in geographic information systems (GIS) in December of 2016. He has worked on a variety of projects which include the excel livability calculator, typology of transit corridor livability, carbon emissions study, and crime stop studies. his contributions range from map creation, python application development, and data interpretation and management. His primary skill-set include Python programming, ArcGIS, and Arc online.

Directions

Welcome to the beta version of our Smart Growth Livability Calculator! This Calculator is designed to help people, public agencies, and professionals make better decisions about growth and development (where and what kind) by allowing them to explore and understand urban quality throughout a community and a region, and how this urban quality relates to sustainability, livability, and social equity. We have detailed instructions below, but for a quick overview of the calculator's capabilities, see the following video:

Viewing Urban Quality Metrics

When you open the Calculator, the first layer that comes up shows Vehicle Miles Traveled per household, which is an important metric for climate action planning, as well as evaluating environmental impacts of development projects. The lighter areas in this VMT layer shows low VMT per household, whereas the darker red areas indicate of higher VMT. Using mouse, exploring the region and these urban quality metrics is made easy through the dynamic hover select capability of your mouse. As you move through the region, these indicators will change based on your selections:

In addition to VMT, we have included a number of other urban quality metrics related to environmental impacts, afforadability, health, and social equity. These other layers can be viewed by selected the "Select Urban Quality Metric" dropdown on the right-hand side:
The circles show half mile catchment areas around transit stations using the high (green), medium (yellow), low (red) smart growth performance typology, based on our national study of urban quality of the National Academies of Sciences.

Selecting Layers

The Smart Growth Livability Calculator allows users to turn overlays on and off by using the layer selection control, which is located in the top-right corner of the map:

Hovering over the layer selection control will display the layers that are loaded into the calculator. show or hide layers by selecting or deselecting the checkboxes next to each layer label: