THE ENERGY COSTS OF HIERARCHICAL URBAN FORM: TRANSPORTATION AND FACILITY OPERATIONS

This study examines the hypothesis that there can be an urban form for a region which is more cost effective than the existing urban form with respect to energy consumption in transportation and facility operations. An urban form defined in this study is a composite of four hierarchical levels of urban places. A hypothetical form for a region is constructed by specifying the size and location of such urban places. This research has focused on the types of employment which are more likely to move within the metropolitan area in response to increasing energy prices or transportation costs. They are retail trade, services, and finance/insurance/real estate. The location of these types of employment, or an urban place, generates a certain number of trips per employee, so that the transportation energy costs resulting from trips can be calculated with the following variables: an average travel distance from all points within the market territory to the location of these commercial facilities, and the number of trips generated at that location. Mutually exclusive market areas are assumed for the urban places of each hierarchical level, so that market areas over different hierarchical levels will overlap. To examine this hypothesis and to specify the range of energy effects, this study proposes seven alternative urban forms and calculates the energy costs in transportation and facility operations for each form. It thereby examines how each form contributes to improving the existing patterns of energy consumption within a metropolitan area. The data base used is the west quarter of the Delaware Valley Region which contains Center City Philadelphia. Decentralized alternative forms in general and a highly centralized alternative form are found to decrease the existing energy consumption in transportation and facility operations within the Delaware Valley Region. It is also found that altering an urban form would produce greater savings in transportation costs and lesser savings in facility operations. This suggests that increasing the number of facility units reduces energy costs more than increasing the size of facility units, given a fixed demand for the total floor area within a region.