| Abstract: | Urban morphology and morphology change and their impacts on urban transportation have been studied extensively in planar urban space. The essential feature of urban space, however, is its three-dimensionality (3D), and few studies have been conducted from a 3D perspective, overly limiting the accuracy of studies on the relationships between urban morphology and transportation. The aim of this paper is to simulate the impacts of 3D urban morphologies on urban transportation under the Digital Earth framework. On the basis of the principle that population distribution and movement are largely confined by 3D urban morphologies, which affect transportation, high spatial resolution remote sensing imagery and a thematic vector data-set were used to extract urban morphology and transportation-related variables. With a combination of three research methods – factor analysis, spatial regression analysis and Euclidean allocation – we provide an effective method to construct a simulation model. The paper indicates three general results. First, building capacity in the urban space has the most significant impact on traffic condition. Second, obvious urban space otherness, reflecting both use density characteristics and functional characteristics of urban space, mostly results in heavier traffic flow pressure. Third, no single morphology density indicator or single urban structure indicator can reflect its contribution to the pressure of traffic flow directly, but a combination of these different indicators has the ability to do so. |
