CREATING LAND-USE SCENARIOS BY CLUSTER ANALYSIS FOR A REGIONAL LAND-USE AND TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS SKETCH PLANNING

This study explores how cluster analysis can be used to categorize a large number of planning districts in a region into a smaller, manageable number of land use scenarios consisting of planning districts of similar land use patterns whose mean land use distribution can be used as future land use alternatives for those planning districts. Utah's Wasatch Front region was used for the analysis. After applying a family of cluster analysis methods, it was possible to group the 343 planning districts in the region into 35 land use planning scenarios. A combination of the Ward's linkage method, the Squared Euclidean distance measure, and the Z-score standardization of variables produced the most logical clustering of planning districts for the region.