Alghais Nayef, Pullar David
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia.
Heliyon. 2018 Mar 29;4(3):e00590. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00590. eCollection 2018 Mar.
The creation of new cities is a planning approach adopted in several regions around the world, in order to accommodate urban growth. New cities are typically constructed according to well-thought out, centralised plans in areas without any prior development. However, whether the development of these new cities is able to address existing urban issues more effectively than traditional methods such as intensification, is currently an unanswered research question. Several Arabian Gulf countries, such as Kuwait are considering the construction of new cities to address urban issues, specifically the traffic congestion and housing shortages. In Kuwait, the master plan for these construction projects was developed solely by state authorities without any public participation or urban modelling that may have provided a more well-rounded view of the potential impacts and effectiveness. This paper aims to address these research opportunities of investigating the effectiveness of new cities in addressing traffic congestion and housing shortage, as well as the potential to integrate public opinions in urban development in the form of a model. Towards that end, the study proposes an Agent Based Model (ABM) that will allow simulating the population distribution and urban growth impacts of new cities in Kuwait by 2050. The methodology involves collecting primary data via interviewing the key government stakeholders of urban development and surveying the residents in order to collect the model inputs. In Kuwait's society, citizens and non-citizens form two distinct resident groups with often very diverse needs and lifestyles; hence the survey responses will differentiate between them. The data from the interviews and surveys from both resident groups will be incorporated as agent behaviours in the ABM. The simulations examine a multitude of scenarios for the new cities, involving construction delays and infrastructure project delays. The results indicate that the impacts of constructing new cities will be favourable across all different scenarios in terms of alleviating the traffic congestion and housing shortage compared to a business as usual approach of existing urban centre expansion. Furthermore, the survey responses confirm that the resident perspectives closely align with the government's priorities in the master plan for the new cities, further improving the chances for the successful project implementation. The methodology and findings may be applied in cities in the Gulf area or elsewhere with similar urban issues.
创建新城市是世界上几个地区采用的一种规划方法，目的是适应城市增长。新城市通常是在没有任何先前开发的地区，按照精心规划的集中式规划建设的。然而，这些新城市的发展是否能够比诸如集约化等传统方法更有效地解决现有城市问题，目前仍是一个未得到解答的研究问题。几个阿拉伯海湾国家，如科威特，正在考虑建设新城市以解决城市问题，特别是交通拥堵和住房短缺问题。在科威特，这些建设项目的总体规划完全由国家当局制定，没有任何公众参与或城市建模，而城市建模可能会对潜在影响和有效性提供更全面的看法。本文旨在探讨这些研究机会，即研究新城市在解决交通拥堵和住房短缺方面的有效性，以及以模型形式将公众意见纳入城市发展的潜力。为此，该研究提出了一种基于智能体的模型（ABM），该模型将能够模拟到2050年科威特新城市的人口分布和城市增长影响。该方法包括通过采访城市发展的主要政府利益相关者和对居民进行调查来收集原始数据，以便收集模型输入。在科威特社会，公民和非公民形成两个不同的居民群体，他们的需求和生活方式往往非常不同；因此，调查回复将区分这两个群体。来自两个居民群体的访谈和调查数据将作为智能体行为纳入ABM。模拟研究了新城市的多种情景，包括建设延误和基础设施项目延误。结果表明，与现有城市中心扩张的照常营业方式相比，建设新城市在缓解交通拥堵和住房短缺方面，在所有不同情景下的影响都是有利的。此外，调查回复证实居民的观点与政府在新城市总体规划中的优先事项密切一致，进一步提高了项目成功实施的机会。该方法和研究结果可应用于海湾地区或其他存在类似城市问题的城市。
