Scenarios and Indicators Supporting Urban Regional Planning

For European urban regional planning, the Impact Assessment tools are used to understand the current situation and to explore concerns about the future of the world. This paper presents the results of scenario modelling and relevant indicators for urban and regional development. Within Europe, Ireland is experiencing one of the severest recessions. It has undergone substantial changes over the past three decades: recession in the 1980s, boom in the 1990s and economic collapse at the end of the 2000s [1]. Over these periods there have been substantial land use changes and population variation [2]. Particularly, the paper investigates the Greater Dublin Region of Ireland where urban development has been intensive and poorly controlled, leading to changes in its spatial configuration and particularly the preponderance of a sprawl type pattern of development. These initial results provide also a platform for a methodology to be used by the two communities of scientists and stakeholders/policy-makers in the application of scenario technique, modeling and indicators approaches towards developing solutions to real world environmental and land use management problems. Proposals for its future development and suggestions for further research are explored.