Analyzing the Effects of Urban Highway Construction on the City with a Futuristic Approach

With the ever-increasing population expansion and the scattered growth of cities, especially in cities centered on personal transportation, we are witnessing the creation and expansion of road networks, especially highways. Transportation can be considered one of the central elements and a role player in the growth and development of the city. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the issues of transportation problems, such as problems related to inner and outer city transportation, traffic problems, noise and air pollution, and waste of time and capital. Managers and urban planners tried to solve these problems, and some urban planners believe that building a highway is one of the ways to improve transportation and adjust the issues and problems related to it, but others believe that highways do not have the ability to respond to existing problems. During the rapid global changes, cities are experiencing a paradigm shift, of which the highway is one of them, and they play an important role in urban mobility and accessibility. In this regard, their effects on the city should also be examined.

The current research method is descriptive-analytical of applied research type. Information and documents have been used to extract indicators affecting highways. The effects of each indicator were analyzed by foresight and cross-effects analysis. The cross-effects analysis method is a kind of foresight method that tries to achieve the possible and likely scenarios in the future for that subject with the cause-and-effect relationships between the factors affecting a subject. In this research, after extracting some indicators using the Delphi method in three rounds, experts were first asked to complete the indicators and effective factors, and in the next step, the mentioned indicators were categorized and finalized, and in the last round, points were determined. The factors have been discussed, which were scored from 0 to 3 and P (possible effects) and entered into Micmac software. Therefore, ten versions of the questionnaire were completed by the experts to determine the points of the factors, and by using the method of cross-effects analysis, which is one of the common and accepted methods of foresight, it analyzed the effective components related to highways. A number of 24 factors related to highway construction have been investigated, and finally, the factors have been analyzed in tables and graphs extracted from this software. The outputs of this method classify the factors affecting highways into five categories of risk variables, influential, secondary leverage, independent and dependent, and show its stability or instability pattern.

In the first stage of model implementation in the current research, using the Delphi method and the opinion of 10 professors and experts, all 24 factors affecting highways were entered into the software, and a short indicator was considered for each one, then the impact of each factor on other factors have been measured with the help of Mic Mac software. In other words, the cross-effects matrix is formed. MicMac software analyzes the direct and indirect relationships of a network by using different calculations and finally creates a map and an influence graph based on which variables can be analyzed and categorized. The level of impact in this model is divided into four groups: no impact (number zero), weak impact (number), medium impact (number two), and high impact (number three). The results of this research show that the variables of the road network change rate, motorized transport use, pedestrian and bicycle paths, the performance and efficiency of land use, the level of surface water pollution, the direction of the city expansion, and the amount of wind and airflow among the indicators and factors that were investigated. The number of changes in the road network and the amount of motorized transport used were the most important effects of intra-city highways.

In general, these things (the amount of change in the road network, the amount of motorized transport use, pedestrian and bicycle paths, the performance and efficiency of land use, the level of surface water pollution, the direction of the city expansion and the amount of wind and airflow) are seven key factors. In addition, there are effects of intra-city highways that should be given special attention in the process of micro and macro-planning to improve the condition of the city and highways.