Christopher J. Pettit

UNSW Sydney | UNSW · City Futures Research Center

Cities often show residential income segregation, and the price of housing is generally related to employment accessibility, but how do these factors intersect? We analyse Greater Sydney, Australia, a metropolitan area of 5 million people. Sydney is found to have reasonably even employment accessibility by car, reflecting the increasingly polycentr...

The causes of bushfires are extremely complex, and their scale of burning and probability of occurrence are influenced by the interaction of a variety of factors such as meteorological factors, topography, human activity and vegetation type. An in-depth understanding of the combined mechanisms of factors affecting the occurrence and spread of bushf...

Real estate markets are complex both in terms of structure and dynamics: they are both influenced by and influence almost all aspects of the economy and are equally vulnerable to the shocks experienced by the broader economy. Therefore, understanding the extent and nature of the impact of large-scale disruptive events such as natural disasters and...

Extensive research has been conducted exploring associations between built environment characteristics and biking. However, these approaches have often lacked the ability to understand the interactions of the built environment, population and bicycle ridership. To overcome these limitations, this study aimed to develop novel urban biking typologies...

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced many new challenges for health, economic activity, and housing around the world. These include the impact on global mobility and multiple prolonged lockdowns restricting internal travel since the pandemic reached Australia in March 2020. However, new travel patterns and changing lifestyle choices have led to ver...

This chapter presents a Land Use Cover Change (LUCC) model application developed for Greater Sydney. It aims to help decision making in the context of the strategic and spatial planning of Greater Sydney. To this end, the model simulates the dynamics of industrial, low density residential and medium-high density residential areas at spatial resolut...

In an era of smart cities, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data is purported to be the 'new oil', fuelling increasingly complex analytics and assisting us to craft and invent future cities. This paper outlines the role of what we know today as big data in understanding the city and includes a summary of its evolution. Through a critic...

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the possibilities of digital technology to assist with urban planning, spurred by increased digitisation of planning work, and ever improving data availability and processing capabilities. Hidden behind recent developments is over thirty years of research and development by scholars in the field of Plann...

The planning of bicycle infrastructure across our cities remains a complex task involving many key stakeholders, including the community, who traditionally have had limited involvement in the planning process. This research develops an interactive bicycle prioritisation index tool which includes participatory spatial and textual citizen feedback. T...

Over the last decade, the emergence and significant growth of home-sharing platforms, such as Airbnb, has coincided with rising housing unaffordability in many global cities. It is in this context that we look to empirically assess the impact of Airbnb on housing prices in Sydney—one of the least affordable cities in the world. Employing a hedonic...

The increased frequency of extreme events facing society is placing mounting pressure on cities and regions that need more robust resilience planning against growing uncertainty. Data augmented participatory methods, such as geodesign, offer much promise in supporting strategic planning to make our cities and regions more resilient. In that context...

The hospitality industry in Sydney, Australia, has been subject to several regulatory interventions in the last decade, including lockout laws, COVID-19 lockdowns and land use planning restrictions. This study has sought to explore the spatial implications of these policies in Inner Sydney between 2012 to 2021. Methods based in spatial analysis wer...

In an era of rapid urbanisation and increasing wealth, gentrification is an urban phenomenon impacting many cities around the world. The ability of policymakers and planners to better understand and address gentrification-induced displacement hinges upon proactive intervention strategies. It is in this context that we build a tree-based machine lea...

Over the last decade, the emergence and significant growth of home sharing platforms such as Airbnb has coincided with rising housing unaffordability in many global cities. It is in this context that we look to empirically assess the impact of Airbnb on housing prices in Sydney-one of the least affordable cities in the world. Employing a hedonic pr...

The planning of bicycle infrastructure across our cities remains is a complex task involving many key stakeholders including the community, who traditionally have had limited involvement in the planning process. This research develops an interactive bicycle prioritisation index tool which includes participatory spatial and textual citizen feedback....

Australia is currently undergoing sweeping changes in transforming and digitizing its planning and development sectors. However, numerous challenges still exist in consolidating and making accessible essential data in the country to effect evidence-based development policy-making. This has been argued to have tangible consequences in formulating so...

Background: Extensive research has been conducted exploring associations of built environment characteristics and biking. However, these approaches have often lacked the ability to understanding the interactions of built environment, population and bicycle ridership. To overcome these limitations, this study aimed to develop novel urban biking typo...

Maintaining indoor environmental (IEQ) quality is a key priority in educational buildings. However, most studies rely on outdoor measurements or evaluate limited spatial coverage and time periods that focus on standard occupancy and environmental conditions which makes it hard to establish causality and resilience limits. To address this, a fine-gr...

Background: Numerous studies have explored associations between bicycle network characteristics and bicycle ridership. However, the majority of these studies have been conducted in inner metropolitan regions and as such, there is limited knowledge on how various characteristics of bicycle networks relate to bicycle trips within and across entire me...

A key component of cellular automata (CA) models is the transition rules that determine the transformation of cells at each iteration. However, most previous studies use a single set of transition rules across the entire study region, and therefore do not fully account for spatial heterogeneity. In this research, a vector CA model has been implemen...

Understanding spatial variation in bicycling within cities is necessary to identify and address inequities. We aimed to explore spatial variation in bicycling and explore how bicycling rates vary across population sub-groups. We conducted a retrospective analysis of household travel survey data in Greater Melbourne, Australia. We present a descript...

Building and using large scale, Automated Valuation Models (AVM) is one of the key multi-disciplinary pursuits in the study of cities and their economies. The methods used in building these AVMs such as ‘hedonic price modelling’ require a ‘co-design’ approach which needs significant collaboration and feedback between the modellers and the users of...

The issue of property evaluation and appraisal has been of high interest for private and public agents involved in the housing industry for the purposes of trade, insurance and tax. This paper aims to investigate how different factors related to the location of a property affect its price over time. The predictive models applied in this research ar...

Big data analytics in smart cities has given rise to the new interdisciplinary field of urban science, which uses data mining, visual analytics, modelling and simulation to create novel planning support systems. One such system is RAISE – the Rapid Analytics Interactive Scenario Explorer, which assists urban planners and local government authoritie...

Background There is consensus that planning professionals need clearer guidance on the features that are likely to produce optimal community-wide health benefits. However, much of this evidence resides in academic literature and not in tools accessible to the diverse group of professionals shaping our cities. Incorporating health-related metrics in...

Improving walkability has the potential to play a major role in improving both accessibility and the public health dimensions of our cities. Walkability research to-date has focused on the influence of the built environment on physical activity associated with health and active transport outcomes. While the probable desirability of walkability to r...

Adoption of digital technologies can support transformative planning for resilient urbanisation against climate extremes. Geodesign, a data augmented collaborative approach, offers potential benefits in the resilience planning process. To assess the role of technology tools in geodesign, this chapter reviews the application of various design and pl...

This paper explores the relationships between accessibility, income segregation, and house prices in the Greater Sydney Area. Sydney is found to have reasonably even employment accessibility, reflecting the increasingly polycentric nature of the modern city; however, it also shows considerable income segregation and variance in property prices betw...

Although housing is a basic human need, many countries have been struggling to ensure their population's housing. Pakistan, a rapidly urbanising country of South Asia, with 212 million people, has the current housing backlog of around 10 million units growing at a rate of 0.4 million units every year. Recently the government has initiated a '5 mill...

As of 2018, 55% of the world population is living in cities, estimated to reach 68 % by 2050 (UN, 2018), which is overburdening the cities, causing numerous socioeconomic and environmental challenges (Asfand, 2012). The United Nations has made an extensive global effort to find ways to man�age these challenges of the cities by means of establish...

This study assesses how an overall decline in Airbnb activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic has affected rental supply and prices in Sydney. Using a comprehensive record of Airbnb listings and rental sales data, we study how Airbnb activity and the rental market has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that in active Airbnb neighbourhoods,...

Objective To investigate facilitators and barriers to all types of cycling in adults aged ≥50 years. Methods An online survey of 1335 cyclists aged ≥50 years residents of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Results Almost all participants (98.5%) reported physical health and fitness as a reason for riding a bicycle, followed by mental health (68.1%...

Blockchain is an emerging technology expected to unleash disruptive and transformational forces in many fields. As a decentralized distributed digital ledger, Blockchain technology has the potential to become an underlying operating system that governs the way our cities function in the future. This paper explores the potential of Blockchain as a t...

In 2016 the Australian Federal Government launched the ‘Smart City Plan’. One of the goals proposed in the plan is that Australian cities should be planned, designed and managed in a way that people are able to perform daily trips for their routine needs, such as commuting to work, within a 30-minute travel time. This was coined in the plan as the...

This paper examined the impact of providing affordable rental housing through inner-city urban renewal projects in Australia. Providing affordable rental housing for lower-income households remains a challenge for planners, builders, policymakers and residents alike. Government intervention for inclusionary zoning in Australia has enhanced affordab...

Background: There is consensus that planning professionals need clearer guidance on the features that are likely to produce optimal community-wide health benefits. However, much of this evidence resides in academic literature and not in tools accessible to the diverse group of professionals shaping our cities. This paper explores the role of planni...

Cities are continually evolving through adjustments to zonings. The potential to integrate more equitable and effective value capture mechanisms into the rezoning process makes estimation of increases in land value from rezoning of interest to urban planners. The use of Residual Land Valuation (RLV), while accepted practice in development feasibili...

The 2019–2020 bushfire season is estimated to be one of the worst fire seasons on record in Australia, especially in New South Wales (NSW). The devastating fire season ignited a heated public debate on whether prescribed burning is an effective tool for preventing bushfires, and how the extent of bushfires has been changing over time. The objective...

In an era of smart cities and digitalisation, there is a plethora of digital government and digital planning initiatives. Such rapid digitalisation is putting the planning profession under pressure to adapt to new digital technology. Our research investigates the use of data and technology, perceived and desired outcomes arising from digital disrup...

In an era of smart cities and digitalisation, there has been a noticeable increase in the development and application of planning support systems (PSS). However, a significant challenge in the broader adoption of these PSS can be attributed to the user experience, which includes the efforts required in pre-processing data. It has been observed that...

We live in an era of rapid urbanization as many cities are experiencing an unprecedented rate of population growth and congestion. Public transport is playing an increasingly important role in urban mobility with a need to move people and goods efficiently around the city. With such pressures on existing public transportation systems, this paper in...

The concept of Living Laboratory (LL) provides a novel grass-roots data-driven approach for collaborative design of place involving multiple stakeholders. In this paper we focused on reviewing the most common approaches utilised in the construct of user-centric LL. This is done by systematically reviewing methodologies and engagement techniques as...

Through the ISPRS scientific initiative presented in this paper, we aim to make geospatial educational resources available and discoverable to those who teach and those who want to learn. In earlier work, we designed and implemented a prototype catalogue for geospatial educational resources, aimed at a target audience in higher education. The succe...

The rise of the term ‘big data’ has contributed to recent advances in computational analysis techniques, such as machine learning and more broadly, artificial intelligence, which can extract patterns from large, multi-dimensional datasets. In the field of urban planning, it is pertinent to understand both how such techniques can advance our underst...

This manuscript identifies and documents unsolved problems and research challenges in the extended reality (XR) domain (i.e., virtual (VR), augmented (AR), and mixed reality (MR)). The manuscript is structured to include technology, design, and human factor perspectives. The text is visualization/display-focused, that is, other modalities such as a...

Many cities, countries and transport operators around the world are striving to design intelligent transport systems. These systems capture the value of multisource and multiform data related to the functionality and use of transportation infrastructure to better support human mobility, interests, economic activity and lifestyles. They aim to provi...

Greater Sydney is expected to be home to an additional 1.7 million people by 2036, making it one of the fastest growing regions in the developed world. Trends suggest that 60% of all new dwellings will be built in established middle suburbs characterised by houses reaching the end of their lifecycle. In the context of the market-driven process of u...

Since 2007, more than fifty percent of our planet’s population is living in urban areas. In the coming decade, the rate of urbanization will be fastest in Asia and Africa. Within South Asian countries, urbanization has attained its fastest pace in Pakistan. Urban planners and agencies in Pakistan have tried various spatial plan making solutions to...

In the digital era of big data, data analytics and smart cities, a new generation of planning support systems is emerging. The Rapid Analytics Interactive Scenario Explorer is a novel planning support system developed to help planners and policy-makers determine the likely land value uplift associated with the provision of new city infrastructure....

There are numerous studies on the identification and explanation of the implementation gap of planning support systems (PSS), that support the smart planning process by analyzing and visualizing data, but which are currently not systematically used in urban planning practice. There is insufficient knowledge about how the PSS implementation gap can...

In an era of rapid urbanization, there is a need for data-driven tools to guide long-term strategic planning. Online What If? (OWI) is a planning support system (PSS) that helps inform strategic planners about the impact of population growth and other socioeconomic factors will have on the future growth of cities. This research presents its applica...

There are valuable opportunities for new data and analytical tools available from the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) to deliver insights into the spatial distribution of current and future health services. Using a national dataset covering health services characteristics and locations, and some of AURIN’s geographic and an...

As cities grow, the continued development pressure and land-use change of peri-urban areas pose a key challenge for urban planners to address. In the planning of peri-urban areas, the complexity of intertwining physical, environmental, transportation, social and institutional planning dimensions, rapidness of change, demand for precision, and subje...

The chapter builds on open-source approaches to develop an early version of a planning support system (PSS) for scenario planning underpinned by cumulative accessibility modelling, Transport Accessibility PSS (TAPSS). In this chapter, we discuss the potential benefits of including rapid route-option testing and dynamic visual feedback on strategic...

Highlights: * Critical overview or urban safety in relation to vulnerable people * Scalable, universal set of safety metrics generated through Open Data * Distinctive methodology for data collection for government decisio-making * Insights on the localisation of global approaches to urban safety * Urban safety dashboard generated based on Open Data...

The world has made two significant transitions in the new millennium. The first involves the transition to a knowledge economy where the most lucrative industry is now the production and management of information or “data”. “Data” is the new “oil” of our age (The Economist, 2017). The second significant transformation is the transition from a rural...

This chapter proposes a cyclic process for improving urban safety for women using Open Data together with civic technologies such as the unique ‘SafetiPin’ app and a purpose-built city dashboard. Safety is a difficult performance criterion to measure at the scale of the local neighbourhood and street. Much existing data is at the metropolitan scale...

Two global transformative changes—rapid urbanisation and mass digital disruption—are brought together in the concept of ‘Informed Urbanisation’. This approach stands in contrast with the more common and more problematic ‘accidental urbanisation’ that is unsustainable, responsive urban growth driven by population demand and economic development. Inf...

Over the last decade, an increasing number of government agencies have developed urban data strategies and contributed to Open Data ecosystems. These initiatives, which look at supporting efficiencies and collaboration in city shaping, are crucial in realising the vision of sustainable, productive, and resilient cities. However, maintaining access...

Real-time Open Data and the ability to create dashboards that aggregate multiple data feeds hold great potential as we adapt and respond to extreme weather events such as cyclones, earthquakes and bushfires. In this chapter, we present a tactical dashboard assembled to provide real-time information to citizens being impacted by extreme weather even...

This paper introduces an online spatial data portal with advanced data access, analytical and visualisation capabilities which can be used for evidence based city planning and supporting data driven research. Through a case study approach, focused in the city of Melbourne, the authors show how the Australian Urban Infrastructure Network (AURIN) por...

Today the world’s largest economies and corporations trade in data and its products to generate value in new disruptive markets. Within these markets vast streams of data are often inaccessible or untapped and controlled by powerful monopolies. Counter to this exclusive use of data is a promising world-wide “open-data” movement, promoting freely ac...

In an era of data-driven smart cities, the possibility of using crowdsourced big data to support evidence-based planning and decision-making remains a challenge. Along with the increased availability and potential utility of crowdsourced data, there is a clear need to assess the validity of these data in order to determine their appropriate use for...

The research identified four main fields of technological advancement that are likely to disrupt the housing sector in future, or are already doing so: matching markets; big data; GIS mapping software; and blockchain. Technological change presents real opportunities for the housing sector, including more efficient allocation of housing stock, more...

There is an increasing interest from city planners and policy makers in evidenced based research in active transportation. Understanding the flows of people moving through the built environment is a vital source of information for the planners and policy makers who shape our cities (Pettit et al. 2016). However, information about bicyclist preferen...

An error in the editing process by Springer unfortunately led to a misspelling of a surname for a co-author of this book. Pettit was misspelt as Petit. It has been corrected as Pettit.

Hedonic estimations of the effect of transport infrastructure on property prices vary widely. This high variability demonstrates a deficit in our understanding of these relationships, limits the utility of econometrics for the valuation of urban property markets, and limits the development and implementation of effective and fair market-based polic...