Activity-Based Demand Modeling for a Future Urban District

• Main Authors: Younes Delhoum, Rachid Belaroussi, Francis Dupin, Mahdi Zargayouna
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-07-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: urban development; activity plans; MATSim (Multi-Agent Transport Simulation); accessibility; population synthesis; transit
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/14/5821

Identifying the spatio-temporal patterns of people activities in urban areas is key to effective urban planning; it can be used in real-estate projects to predict their future impacts on behavior in surrounding accessible areas. LaVallée is a large construction project recently started in Paris’s suburb; it is a new district due in 2024. The paper is in the field of urban planning, aiming at developing a method making it possible to model the potential visits of the various equipment and public spaces of the district, by mobilizing data from census at the departmental level, and the layout of shops and activities as defined by the real-estate project. This model takes into account the flow of external visitors, estimated realistically based on the pre-project movements in the areas of influence of LaVallée. In this paper, we propose an activity-based model methodology to determine trips and their purpose at a mesoscopic scale including the city and surrounding areas, in the current baseline scenario. This travel demand is required to estimate potential external visitors of the future district. A first demonstration shows that the model correctly represents the current demands and allows the forecast of future demand in the area.