Spatial Analysis
The Spatial Analysis group aims to undertake both pure and applied research combining substantive interests and analytical methods. The group seeks to develop computer based models and methods for spatial analysis, visualization, mapping and geographical information systems. Substantive interests cover: population, land use change, transport, health care, education, retailing, housing and local services, as well as more general aspects of information use in urban, regional and rural policy making. The focus of work is both international and national. Members of the group have undertaken collaborative work and research in a variety of countries with an increasing interest and international reputation for work in China.
The group has strong links with the Centre for Education in the Built Environment and works with the Centre to research, promote and deliver Internet-based education and training.
Progressing Priority Research Areas, Themes and Projects
Cities generate wealth as individuals and firms come together in co-operative acts. They are the spatial manifestations of co-operation. Spatial order is constantly evolving, however, as individuals seek to reduce the costs of transacting with each other. Spatial pattern is only one form of order. The billions of individual transactions that create and sustain cities are also ordered by institutions and organisations. Institutions assign property rights to resource owners and impose constraints on individuals and firms as they exchange rights over resources for mutual gain. They reduce the cost of competition by assigning rights and liabilities. Organisations combine property rights into new decision-making entities, achieving efficiencies and bringing together resource owners for mutual gain. Spatial order, institutional order and organisational order co-evolve as tastes, preferences, institutional values and infrastructure and technology change.
The spatial analysis group's research agenda reflects this understanding of the evolving city in which order emerges spontaneously, with or without and hindered or helped by planned order. The morphology of cities and regions is shaped by a multitude of transactions ordered by the institutions of government; the institutions of markets; and the institutions of communities and cultures. Specific research themes and questions addressed by the group are listed below.
Sustainability
Research questions addressed include the following: How do we model suppressed and induced traffic demand? How do we assess the benefits of highway investment under alterative pricing regimes? What are the impacts of travel demand from tourism and commuting and how does this vary internationally? What are the effects of road pricing and to what extent does it achieve a modal shift within cities? How can we measure the financial costs and benefits of locational externalities within cities?
Governance and Planning
Research questions addressed include the following: What innovations can be discovered as we share experiences in the way cities around the world organise and finance public goods? What are the implications of proprietary forms of residential development (gated communities) for urban spatial, social and economic structure? Are there optimal levels of exclusion (from congested resources) consistent with a sustainable city? How do cities evolve under different governance regimes and how can these be modelled? What conceptual tools does the new institutional economics offer the economic geographical theory of cities?
Social Inclusion
Research questions addressed include the following: Social and spatial differentiation within cities and the importance of residential neighbourhood choice and housing market dynamics. The social and spatial effects on voter turnout through time. The change of health inequalities over time, access to health services, health systems analysis, allocation of resources to health services. The evolution of property rights in cities and the enclosure of the urban commons. The growth of Chinese housing market differentiation and urban inequality and poverty.
Methods of Spatial Analysis and Planning
Many of the research questions listed in the sections above have a strong methodological dimension. This is the forte of the Spatial Analysis Research Group at Cardiff - asking substantial research questions (theoretical and practical) using rigorous methodological approaches. In recent years, members of the group have made important methodological contributions in the following fields:
(a) statistical models of accessibility, deprivation, service demand and need; (b) dynamic models of induced traffic demand; (c) measuring morphological regularity and pattern in cities; (d) measuring population and dwelling density from satellite imagery; (e) simulating the evolution of cities under alternative regulatory regimes; (f) simulating the co-evolution of urban form and institutions (informal neighbourhood agreements); (g) statistical models of stated preference in neighbourhood choice; (h) statistical models of the housing market including local extenalities; (i) theoretical developments in the economics of transport pollution; (j) theoretical developments in the analysis of property rights, transaction costs and urban growth efficiency.
Teaching and Learning Technology, the Internet and Education
The Centre for Education in the Built Environment (CEBE) is a national centre for promoting good practice in the University Schools of Planning, Architecture, Building and Surveying. It is directed by Chris Webster, the Spatial Analysis Research Group Convenor and among its emphases is the need to forge strong links between research and teaching. It funds and undertakes research into teaching and learning issues and it facilitates networks of academics aimed at sharing ideas, resources and innovations.