Keywords

1 Introduction

Modern cities, due to its extent, are no longer based solely on availability of walking tour. Transport systems which allow to move inhabitants in the city, are mainly based on vehicle and rail transportation. This includes the individual car transportation, public bus transportation and rail transportation (tram, subway, light rail). Cities typically have large developed public transport systems based on vehicle traffic and rail. In medium-sized cities usually dominating transportation is the public transport, based on a network of bus lines serving small part of the displacement of existing residents. Individual transportation in Poland is developing very dynamically, effectively blocking the flow of traffic in the centers of large and medium-sized cities. Increasingly, majority of these cities is planning ergonomic parking systems to ensure optimum use of space in downtown. The problem has become so important that growing number of mayors of medium-sized cities is implementing paid parking zones in city centers as well as thinking about collective parking locations on the outskirts of downtown, including Park & Ride systems.

The plans of urban development of large cities are being developed based on a contemporary trend of limiting vehicular traffic in favor of public transport. For this purpose, the existing urban fabric are determining collective space for the location of parking lots that allow you to leave the car and get to a destination within the city using public transport (i.e. a system of P&R). Many urban agglomerations decide on such a solution and have to designate an area for the strategic parking lots system. Criteria for assessing the quality of the selected location are formulated in general terms or descriptions, and the factors to be assessed are often vague and fuzzy, difficult to delineate, but possible to be reviewed by an expert at a value of linguistic variables. Due to the large number of parameters practice has shown that the selection of the location of these sites in an intuitive way, with no detailed analysis of all conditions, often produces negative results. It happens that the completed buildings are not used as expected.

Considering above issues it should be noted that after the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, including Poland, the issue of implementation of “sustainable transport” in the cities has grown in importance also in our cities. But it is hard for a reliable assessment of the situation, because the system of monitoring transport behavior in Poland is not functioning properly. Model of transport in the city is reflected in many aspects of life for its residents and from the accepted transport solutions it depends largely on what is referred to as “quality of life”. No wonder then, that the choice of a particular transport options can result in issues such as noise, the amount of green space, commuting times, pollution, scale accidents etc. It’s all to be made up for of what is the nature of the city and the inhabitant’s style of life.

Relying polish modern urbanization on conditions of car traffic does not permit the continuation of the traditional model of the city, due to the increasing lack of space. And as rightly observed by Jan Gehl, the quality of urban spaces do not provide the buildings themselves but above all that, life goes on in them and among them. In Europe, shrinking cities are widespread. It is also found in Poland. All this is happening just at a time when Poland has the ability to implement large-scale modern urban development processes. At the same time thanks to the financial support of the European Union, Poland has an unique opportunity to continue the corrective actions of urban technical infrastructure and to support environmental protection.

In this studyFootnote 1 urban and architectural location of garage objects and parking lot spaces in the Polish cities is diagnosed by very broad group of large and medium-sized cities. The study covered a range of held by the cities transport and parking policies, and also the analysis of the locations and the standards provided in the existing parking facilities.

2 Polish Urban Transformation

Nearest future in Poland will surely be marked with the increased meaning of city structure transformation issues, including revitalization, restoration and sanitation of depreciated downtown building. Nevertheless, the processes of urban sprawl will not be deterred and providing them with opportunities to develop without unnecessary additional costs appears to be necessary. Unplanned and badly organized building in suburban areas will be an expression of the depreciated urban development phenomenon. Further scattering of urban program in large parts of suburban areas is the most serious threat to the future of spatial structures in polish cities [1].

The above-mentioned phenomena affect directly the way of urban development. Areas of the traditional city centers and downtowns are exposed to gradual extinction and decline of attractiveness. In turn, multifunctional shopping centers are becoming, as indeed the name suggests, the new urban centers, serving not only commercial, but increasingly entertaining and even recreational functions. More and more often we meet other functions growing around shopping centers, which were considered so far by the planners to be closely linked to the city center.

So the problem is current and urgent to solve because of the speed of change in Poland. Democratic procedures are characterized by a certain heaviness resulting from the application of all requirements of the law – they do not let go for shortcuts. Additionally, subjectivity in the process of planning, obtained by Polish citizens in 1989, often manifests itself through a tough opposition to any resolution which can provide order in municipal government actions.

The spatial structure of the city is not fixed and perpetuated in the space once and for all, but it is a subject to constant transformations associated with the vast array of social, economic and environmental conditions [1]. Modern transformations of urban cities in Poland, especially after 1989, after the departure from the centrally planned economy and the introduction of a market economy, are combined with the appearance in this area of hitherto unknown phenomena and spatial conditions. The development of cities and municipalities resulting from changes in civilization and technological progress causes uncontrolled growth of transportation problems in urban areas. Today’s pace of development of the automotive industry, and thus resulting increase in the number of vehicles, poses in front of urban planning tasks the primary purpose to reduce conflicts in this area, because in the limited spaces of modern Polish cities there is a huge need for an unconventional solutions in the field of transportation and parking.

The argument confirming the need to address these issues reveals itself in an active and sometimes even enthusiastic participation in our research work of the officials and decision-makers from municipal governments, with whom the research team started to cooperate.

3 Research Objectives

The object of this research was to examine urban planning location of garage and parking objects in Poland and to develop a feasibility study on the location of customizable prefabricated multi-level car park buildings in selected Polish cities.

Area of interest covered by the study is limited to the provinces located in western and central Poland. This includes half of the Polish provinces. Within these provinces is located 58 towns, in which were carried out further detailed analysis (Figs. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1.
figure 1

P&R near the suburban train station in Wroclaw (own)

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Fig. 2.
figure 2

P&R near the city stadium in Wroclaw (own)

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During the work on the research topic a list of cities was set for further analysis of the problem details. The final version of the materials was also established and have been devolved to the city decision-makers with a proposal to cooperate in determining the needs and feasibility of multi-level car park buildings, and to base that cooperation on customizable prefabricated multi-level car park buildings system developed during works on a research grant. These materials were intended to encourage the authorities of the designated cities to cooperate and allow them to look more closely into the effects of existing work.

A list of the cities, which could potentially be a subject to further analysis was proposed during the first stage of the research as well as the set of criteria to be used in the next stages to create a catalogue of cities chosen for further examination.

Then, an analysis of existing in polish cities cubic capacity parking facilities, which were not merged with other service functions, was performed. It turned out that there is only 29 such objects. Most of them in Warsaw, slightly less in other provincial cities. A little execution was recorded in medium-sized cities. In this group of cities there were many plans and projects of such implementations, but practically they have no chance of execution. In this study there was no analysis concerning garages or parking lots built in objects of special destination, such as offices and retail services. This is due to the specificity of research on a particular solution, which is customizable prefabricated parking lot building.

Also the literature dealing with multi-level parking garages was reviewed and referrals to domestic and foreign literature were made. Based on this review the most interesting publications and scientific researches were chosen. Also a set of circumstances was established, indicating the need for extension of parking places.

Detailed topics, concerning questions included in the survey forwarded to the municipalities selected by the earlier city analysis, were agreed and developed during discussions in the last part of the study.

Survey issues were built based on the following topics:

  1. 1.

    Questions concerning residential areas

  2. 2.

    Questions concerning large employers

  3. 3.

    Questions concerning business centers

  4. 4.

    Questions concerning shopping centers

  5. 5.

    Questions concerning recreation areas and tourist attractions

  6. 6.

    Questions concerning traffic and parking issues

  7. 7.

    Questions concerning city structure

  8. 8.

    Questions concerning directions of the city development

The survey made it possible to obtain a representative sample range of examined issues and expert opinions used for further simulation studies by using the tools of fuzzy logic.

Analysis of the location possibilities for customized, prefabricated parking facilities has been made primarily on the basis of material obtained in the survey form, as well as on the basis of planning and strategic materials and, in some cases, direct meetings with representatives of the city.

As a result of the survey details from eight Polish cities were obtained: Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Opole, Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, Kolobrzeg, Jelenia Gora, Bielsko Biala, Bytom and Leszno. Two cities have expressed their desire to participate in the survey and related research, but neither a meeting with representatives of the city nor filling out the survey was organized or completed by those two parties: Walbrzych and Pila. Meetings with city authorities were held in the following cities: Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Opole, Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, Kolobrzeg and Jelenia Gora. Other cities, i.e. Bielsko Biala, Bytom and Leszno only sent filled in survey materials. In October a further analysis of the cities was performed, using materials obtained through surveys and interviews, as well as own literature and Internet queries research, that is described in the study as well. Simultaneously work on modeling, based on the testing apparatus of fuzzy logic, took place.

One of the most important things was to determine the nature and extent of the needs for parking spaces in selected medium-sized cities in Poland. Based on such data, obtained through cooperation with the city authorities, which helped to determine the real parking needs and by modeling variants of possible solutions using fuzzy logic, the research team was able to develop parking policy scenarios for the selected cities.

Analysis of the current situation and the state of knowledge in Poland within the scope of the project and the needs of the market indicates, that the current market demand for cubic capacity parking facilities is estimated at about 3 million parking spaces [3].

4 Utilization of Fuzzy Logic

Fuzzy logic is based on fuzzy sets [3]. With traditional definition of sets we can encounter some difficulties in determining the membership of some of the items to the set, due to the fact that in the classical definition, we can identify only two states: true or false. An example would be to define a set of women young and old. It is easy to determine the extreme states, i.e. at what age the woman is certainly young (e.g. 20 years), and at what age the woman is certainly old (e.g. 80 years). It is more difficult to determine clearly the border between the two sets. The question is whether a 40-years old woman is young or old? And if the border between the sets runs just on the line of 40 years, why one day later she will be described as old? In such situations, difficult to unambiguously determine, we use theory of fuzzy sets. Fuzzy sets define membership to a set in a fuzzy way. First we need to define some clear states. This is defined based on the knowledge and experience of an expert in his field. For the example above, the expert will determine the age of young women and old, at which he has no doubts (i.e. 20 and 80 years). Then we built up the membership functions, so that we are able to define each intermediate state, as the proportional membership in both sets. E.g. 40-year-old woman is young at 30 % and old at 70 %. The boundary between the collections becomes very fuzzy.

Classic fuzzy inference relies upon the knowledge and experience of the expert. Further application process is described mathematically. When building a model of fuzzy inference it is needed to apply the expert rules. Expert at the beginning of it has to designate a space in which he is sure of the reasoning, and intermediate states between these areas come alone, as a result of further mathematical analysis. Such analyzes are carried by a specialist in the field of fuzzy logic, who is choosing the appropriate functions of fuzzy sets and formulas that will calculate interim results and the final result.

At the current stage the research conducted intention of building a model of the location of parking garages as part of the P&R system in the city. This subject was considered a priority because the majority of the surveyed cities would introduce a system of P&R or see the need to introduce the system, although there are no binding decisions made up yet.

5 Research Effect

All surveyed cities recognized the city traffic problems as one of the key problems for the city, including the problem of parking vehicles in areas of inner-city and strict center areas. In terms of parking policy of the city they presented a variety of approaches for planned solutions.

In the model, the existing urban fabric determines the location of collective parking lots, that would allow to leave the car and get to the desired destination within the city using public transportation (i.e. P&R system) and parking lots located close enough to the destination, so it can be reached on foot (i.e. P&W system).

Many urban agglomerations decide to such solution and must determine the place of the location of car parks system. Criteria for assessing the quality of the selected location are often formulated in general and descriptive way, and the factors to be assessed are often ambiguous and fuzzy, difficult to precisely determine, but possible to assess by the expert at the level of linguistic variables. Due to the large number of parameters, practice has shown that the selection of the location of these sites in an intuitive manner, without detailed analysis of all conditions, often gives negative results. It happens that the completed buildings are not used as expected.

Therefore, in this study it was decided to use fuzzy inference to assess the location of the parking systems based on fuzzy input parameters [5]. The obtained result of the analysis allows to determine the degree of attractiveness of the place on the basis of a broad set of expert’s input. The proposed evaluation method has been tested on a few ready-made solutions, for which the effect is already known.

6 Summary

On the basis of the preliminary analysis and as a result of the research presented in the article [3] it can be stated, that fuzzy inference can be widely used in the evaluation of urban indicators, particularly in the assessment of multi-level parking locations. Current assessment of indicators for urban planning was carried out by an expert (human) and based on the parameters difficult to measure, often not supported by precise calculations. Such reasoning was simple for the uncomplicated, clear systems. Mixed structures, which require more complex analysis, were more problematic in making a clear assessment by even an experienced expert. The specificity of fuzzy logic is directed to support exactly such expert actions.

The proposed validation model clearly showed the convergence of the analysis carried out by a large team of experts and user reviews with the methodology based on fuzzy inference model. Such studies were necessary to perform, so that further researches on other cities could be provided with credibility. Cities analyzed in the basic stage of research often have no alternative expert studies and it is planned to use the results of fuzzy inference as the primary localization indicator for multi-level car parks. Even if in some cases such studies are available, they are limited to a few locations. The specifics of the analysis conducted by team of experts is in difficulty of presenting a proposal with a lot of alternatives. Our method [4], because of the calculations and computer analysis, will quickly evaluate alternative locations depending on the potential proposals from the city authorities to determine the input parameters to the model of fuzzy inference allows to evaluate the quality of the selected locations of P&R car parks system. The method is so friendly, that it also enables fast simulation of additional potential situations such as e.g. increasing the running frequency of public transport vehicles.

The results of the research presented in the article [4], shown at an international scientific conference - 17th International Conference on Urban, Regional Planning and Transport, Paris 2015, do confirm the effectiveness of the method. It can be used in spatial planning as a tool to assess the quality of location in a quick and easy way. In the next stage, this method will be extended to investigate potential locations of multi-level car parks in the system of P&W, which is the target parking.