An exploratory model for sustainable urban development: A GIS-based case study on the development of Austin, Texas

This dissertation explores a synthetic view of institutional and political economy paradigms for examining the evolution of urban forms. Using the Austin metropolitan area as a case study, this dissertation demonstrates how the integration of various perspectives can help us better understand the forces in shaping the development of urban form. This study compares the theoretical arguments on the micro, meso, and macro perspectives as well as the debates on centralism and decentralism of urban forms. The theoretical arguments are then applied to examine the Austin's past urban forms. The three forecast scenarios derived from the long range transportation plan updates for the Austin metro area are compared in terms of the sustainability based on intensification, nucleation, and diversification arguments. The methodology used in the comparison of urban forms is a loose-coupling GIS-Based spatial analysis using the modeling results derived from land use and travel demand modeling. The visualization of spatial analysis results is presented in Excel and ArcView.