The Impacts of Urban Form on Travel (Working Paper)

A Critical Review

Author(s): Crane, Randall
Publication Date: March 1999

46 pages; Inventory ID WP99RC1; English


The Impacts of Urban Form on Travel	356 KB

Abstract

What is the scope for using land use and urban design to reduce automobile travel? This paper reviews the recent literature on how the built environment may or may not influence travel behavior. It begins with a short summary of urban spatial theory and other conceptual frameworks explicitly linking urban structure to travel. This is followed by work that uses data on actual behavior to examine and then test several hypotheses. The paper summarizes these studies at the same time that it critically evaluates their data, methods, and conclusions. It concludes that while research on this important set of topics is improving in several respects, our current understanding of these relationships remains poor. The rational basis for using land use and urban design to change travel behavior thus appears limited.