ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to outline and evaluate recent such efforts to integrate land-use and transport policy in the Belfast Metropolitan Area in Northern Ireland, wherein significant policy initiatives have been undertaken at both regional and metropolitan scales. Urban sprawl has resulted from increasingly affluent householders and commercial investors exercising their locational choices in a free market, aided by the availability of good quality transport infrastructure and relatively cheap private transport. The evolving policy process has given greater recognition to the relationship between land-use and transportation and the need for an integrated approach, framed within a sustainable development agenda. A central theme in policy prescriptions has been the integration of land-use planning and transportation. There is a growing realisation that the primary means to improve both the environment and congestion is to reduce the need to travel, and in particular the length of trips needed to carry out daily activities.
