Centrality assessment of neighbourhood commercial areas in lskandar Malaysia

Abstract

Centrality plays an important role in determining urban spaces and a centralized facility or amenity tends to attract more people. In these decades of concerns about climate change, centralized commercial areas can make a difference in terms of cutting down on travel-induced carbon emission. Thus, this paper discusses on centrality assessment of the commercial areas within selected neighborhoods in lskandar Malaysia. The study is aimed at identifying the distribution of commercial areas within the lskandar Malaysia neighborhoods and evaluating the centrality of street networks in relation to these commercial areas using multiple centrality measures that include Reach, Betweenness, Straightness, Closeness and Gravity Index. Urban Network Analysis, an ArcGIS 10.x extension, was used for computing and displaying of these centrality measures. Using data of household travel-induced carbon emission from another study of the same neighborhoods, we try to rationalize the results of this study against those of the other study. The results indicate that most neighborhoods commercial areas are not located within a central location, thus allowing for unnecessary increase in travel carbon emission.