Transportation System Ecology

What is the ecology of transportation systems? How does the nature of road configuration across a landscape affect things like traffic congestion, land use, human health, and air quality? Over recent years, transportation systems have been recognized as broader contexts for communities. Take streets, for example. Instead of just focusing on how efficiently they can serve the automobile to get from place A to place B, streets and their design across the natural & built environment can also serve as public spaces where crucial social & economic exchanges take place.

In this video, Dale Azaria brings us into the complex world of transportation issues. Using Chittenden Country, Vermont as a case study, she explores how the arrangement of the built environment in space affects how much travel people need to do. She uses tools like Simulation Modeling and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) to look at current transportation trends as well as possibilities for where the system may be heading in the future.

Dale is a Transportation Scholar at UVM's Transportation Research Center. Her work focuses on transportation and land use planning, particularly in the context of Chittenden County, Vermont. Her Master's thesis topic focuses on the use of simulation modeling to explore the possibilities for reducing vehicle miles traveled through effective land use planning and changes to the built environment.

A Production of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, an affiliate of the Rubenstein School for Environment & Natural Resources at the University of Vermont

The Gund Institute is a transdisciplinary research, teaching, and service organization focused on developing integrative solutions to society's most pressing problems. We conduct integrative research and service-learning projects on a broad range of topics, offer hands-on learning through our problem-solving workshops and courses, develop online teaching resources and international collaborations through metacourses, and support professional and graduate education through our Graduate Certificates in Ecological Economics and Ecological Design. Learn more about the Gund community of students, scholars and practioners by exploring our news, publications, and video archives, then contact us to help us build a sustainable, widely shared quality of life.

For more information visit: uvm.edu/​giee/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• simulation modeling
• ecology
• transportation systems
• transportation
• urban ecology
• VMT
• urban planning
• chittenden county
• vermont
• UVM
• university of vermont
• gund
• gund institute
• ecological
• dale azaria
• interview
• RSENR
• natural resources