SAI-P: Coupling Regional Economic Development with Transportation Planning for Sustainable Emerging Cities

加强美国基础设施(SAI)是一项NSF计划，旨在刺激以人类为中心的基础性研究和潜在的变革性研究，以加强美国的基础设施。有效的基础设施为社会经济活力和广泛的生活质量改善提供了坚实的基础。强大、可靠和有效的基础设施刺激私营部门创新，增长经济，创造就业机会，提高公共部门服务提供效率，加强社区力量，促进机会均等，保护自然环境，增强国家安全，推动美国的领导地位。要实现这些目标，需要来自科学和工程学科的专业知识。SAI侧重于人类推理和决策、治理以及社会和文化过程的知识如何能够建设和维护有效的基础设施，改善生活和社会，并建立在技术和工程进步的基础上。在该国的许多地区，经济发展创造了对交通基础设施的日益增长的需求。这对中小城市来说尤其具有挑战性，在这些城市，这种发展可能会以积极和消极的方式影响生活质量。该SAI规划项目确定了将经济发展活动与交通基础设施投资更好地结合起来的机会，特别注重最大限度地提高中小增长城镇当前和未来居民的生活质量。它将不同的利益相关者聚集在一起，以更好地了解这种耦合的当前实践，并确定改善这种耦合的障碍。当务之急是确保积极主动地将经济发展和交通规划结合起来，以便在社区居民中公平地分配发展的积极和消极影响。该项目通过焦点小组制定研究议程，主题包括经济发展和交通基础设施规划相结合、社区居民生活质量发展影响的公平性以及改善区域发展和基础设施规划相结合的公平性。焦点小组包括当地和地区政府的利益相关者、交通当局、社区团体和研究人员。该项目旨在提供未来几十年新兴城市如何以可持续和公平的方式利用经济增长的路线图。这个SAI规划项目结合了利益相关者参与的参与性研究方法、交通网络分析和运筹学模型，用于长期基础设施规划。该项目开发了主动投资交通基础设施的方法，以满足经济发展带来的日益增长的需求。这种方法有助于确保当前和未来社区居民的生活质量不会受到这种发展的不利影响，最好是通过这种发展来改善。规划活动还提供了关于如何最好地改善社区居民在经济发展影响(积极和消极)方面的公平性的见解。参与式研究方法的实施共同产生了关于当前实际障碍的知识，这些障碍限制了经济发展和交通基础设施之间的更好耦合，同时促进了成果转化为实践。该奖项由社会、行为和经济理事会(SBE)支持。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Strengthening American Infrastructure (SAI) is an NSF Program seeking to stimulate human-centered fundamental and potentially transformative research that strengthens America’s infrastructure. Effective infrastructure provides a strong foundation for socioeconomic vitality and broad quality of life improvement. Strong, reliable, and effective infrastructure spurs private-sector innovation, grows the economy, creates jobs, makes public-sector service provision more efficient, strengthens communities, promotes equal opportunity, protects the natural environment, enhances national security, and fuels American leadership. To achieve these goals requires expertise from across the science and engineering disciplines. SAI focuses on how knowledge of human reasoning and decision-making, governance, and social and cultural processes enables the building and maintenance of effective infrastructure that improves lives and society and builds on advances in technology and engineering.In many regions of the country, economic development creates increased demand for transportation infrastructure. This can be especially challenging for small- and medium-size cities, where such development can impact quality of life in both positive and negative ways. This SAI planning project identifies opportunities to better couple economic development activities with transportation infrastructure investments, with a particular focus on maximizing the quality of life of current and future residents of small- and medium-sized growing towns and cities. It brings together diverse stakeholders to better understand current practices in this coupling and to identify barriers for improving such coupling. A top priority is to ensure that proactive coupling of economic development and transportation planning allows for an equitable distribution of the positive and negative impacts of development across residents of a community. The project produces a research agenda through focus groups on topics including coupled economic development and transportation infrastructure planning, equity in quality-of-life development impacts for community residents, and improving equity in coupled regional development and infrastructure planning. The focus groups include stakeholders in local and regional government, transportation authorities, community groups, and researchers. The project aims to provide a roadmap on how emerging cities can leverage economic growth in a sustainable and equitable manner over the next several decades.This SAI planning project combines stakeholder-engaged participatory research methods, transportation network analysis, and operations research models for long-term infrastructure planning. The project develops methods for proactive investment in transportation infrastructure to meet increased demand resulting from economic development. This approach helps to ensure that the quality of life of current and future community residents is not detrimentally impacted by such development and, ideally, improves through it. The planning activity also provides insight about how best to improve equity in economic development impacts (positive and negative) across community residents. The implementation of participatory research methods co-produces knowledge on the current practical barriers that limit better coupling between economic development and transportation infrastructure while facilitating the transition of results into practice.This award is supported by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.