Surveying density, urban characteristics, and development capacity of station areas in the Delta Metropolis

Journal article, 2014

The combination of growing mobility needs and dwindling transportation budgets in the Dutch Delta Metropolis has raised the need for smarter use of existing public transport infrastructure. A significant portion of this smarter use may come from strengthening the ties between infrastructure improvements and transit-oriented development. To further this goal, the Delta Metropolis Association has developed SprintCity (SprintStad in Dutch), a serious game and planning support tool that engages stakeholders in transit-oriented development to explore interaction between transport and land use, as described in Bertolini’s node–place model. However, its underlying database has proven insufficient to draw conclusions regarding urban character and development capacity around stations. This paper focuses on morphological research that aims to improve this database by exploring the density and urban morphology of station areas in the Delta Metropolis beyond readily available statistics, and discusses the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of this survey. The surveying of station areas in 2010 was conducted by a team of six researchers, based on the Spacemate© methodology developed by Berghauser Pont and Haupt. The methodology allows detailed quantitative measurement of the density and spatial characteristics of clearly demarcated urban districts, defining their so-called ‘spatial fingerprint’. The resulting database of 850 districts in 55 station areas has served descriptive goals, strengthening the realism in the SprintCity game, and serves as the database for further establishing the development potential of station areas.