The influence of functional zoning on land use and travel behavior in Shanghai, China

In the last three decades China has demonstrated remarkable progress in its urbanization as well as urban planning. Functional zoning is an important part in the statutory urban planning “general planning” in China. But now many literatures focuses on the ecological zoning and main-functional zone division, which is proposed by ecologists and economists in China, only few scholars have mentioned the functional zoning in urban planning, not to mention the effects of the function on traffic behavior and land use. Selecting 30 stations from 267stations in 11 rail transit lines in Shanghai, the study focuses on the urbanized rail station areas within a 500 m-radius of a rail station and examines the influence of functional zoning on land use factors like land use type, LUM, FAR and traffic behavior factors like trip mode, public transit ratio, travel duration. Data on density, floor area ratio, land use types(dwelling, office, commerce & finance, industry, education and others), diversity and the public transit ratio was acquired from investigation and then calculated by Entropy formula, GIS, CAD and SPSS. Data on travel behaviors, the quality of transit service, and the characteristics of passengers was gained from questionnaires. And the data of bus lines, frequency, operation time, the quantity of transit stop etc. was gained from diverse databases such as Shanghai metro, ddmap and then checked through other public authorities and spot checks. This work will demonstrate the correlation of functional zoning and land use as well as traffic behavior, enhance viewpoints of general planning towards a more systematic, comprehensive insight of functional zoning development, and most importantly find a new way to both optimize land use and enhance the traffic design.