The integration of land-use and transport planning can play a crucial role in achieving sustainable development. Land-use and transportation systems are closely interlinked: transport planning affects the patterns of urban development and location choices of households and businesses, while changes in land-use patterns influence the number of trips, their destinations, and modes of transport. The rise of new transport technologies brings about additional challenges to decision-making processes and requires effective methods for predicting changes based on new patterns of movement in urban environments. Thus, it has been argued that better integration of interventions within transport and land-use planning could help establish better policy alignment for dealing with complex challenges, such as achieving sustainability goals.
This discussion paper reviews how land-use and transportation analysis is made in four Nordic countries—Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. Based on presentations from local and national-level actors at an Integrated Land-Use and Transport Analysis workshop (16 June 2025), the report shows that much potential remains for developing effective tools that combine land-use and transport decisions in the Nordics.
The four Nordic countries included in this report acknowledge the integration of transportation and land use to some degree in the tools they use, but they do not do so with the same indicators, data inputs, evaluation metrics, or predictive capabilities. In most cases, they lack the tools to forecast transportation demand to the extent that a LUTI model might offer. Therefore, this report reveals potential for further knowledge exchange and innovation so that Nordic urban areas can adopt the most effective tools and planning practices that lead to more sustainable development.
