Land use, transport, and environment interactions: WCTR 2016 contributions and future research directions

Abstract Research on the interaction amongst land use, transport, and the environment has a long history and can fill volumes of publications. Such research has contributed to urban and transportation planning and substantially reduced problems in transport, land use, and the environment. However, solving traditional problems caused by the spatial disorder of land use and transportation facilities still remains an elusive goal. For instance, we can easily find that severe traffic jams and high car dependencies cause various problems in many developed cities, while extensive suburbanization driven by high mobility has led to increased energy consumption and environmental impact. Similar problems have emerged in developing countries with a greater magnitude than in developed nations. Additionally, new problems related to sustainability, including social exclusion and climate change, are in effect around the world. The progress and emergence of new technologies in transportation, the potential of travel behavior monitoring, and the sensing of the earth surface are motivating the expansion of research topics and methodologies. The World Conference on Transport Research Society (WCTRS) is one of the oldest research communities studying land use/transport interactions. This virtual special issue consists of selected and fully reviewed papers presented at the 2016 World Conference on Transport Research (WCTR) in Shanghai. In this editorial, we place these published contributions and others made during the conference in the context of the broader literature, present an assessment of the progress of research in this domain, and finally propose an agenda for future research directions in the field of transport, land use, and environmental interactions.