Environmental Impacts Assess

URBANIZATION & ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ANALYSIS 

INTRODUCTION 

In recent years, Northeast Ohio has seen significant expansion of urbanized areas. This sprawling expansion comes at a price of inefficient land use patterns and impacts to environmental quality in the region. The concerns for land use encompass avoiding sprawl of urbanized lands while preserving environmental quality at both regional and neighborhood levels. As such, efforts are being made to examine the issues in search of better means of controlling and managing urban growth for sustainable environment. 

In this part of the report, we first discuss urbanization as an environmental issue to establish the foundation of this review. Next, we discuss various means of environmental analysis via reviewing various models that have been suggested by various research institutions and government agencies. 

Given that a wide variety of subjects can be included as possible environmental issues and the limited space in this report, it is not our intention to review in detail all of the individual attempts for modeling specific aspect of environmental impacts. Consequently, the focus is placed on reviewing the different approaches to conducting environmental analysis as related to the control and management of urban growth in the context of Northeast Ohio region. Moreover, there are numerous models with computerized implementation available from commercial or public entities. Again, we review only those that we recognize as possible alternatives to be adapted in Northeast Ohio 15-county region. 

With the environmental analysis reviewed in this part, the second part of the report provides reviews of existing models of urban growth. Whenever appropriate, the review of urban growth models will incorporate environmental issues in the evaluation of the models. In concluding this report, recommendations are proposed for the Northeast Ohio 15-county region. 

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