01155399

Component

Little consensus exists about the ideal geographical scale of the compact city model with regard to the travel patterns of its residents and users. In Flanders, the average trip distance (12.5 km) has become too large to be possibly associated with the size of the existing compact cities. However, this does not necessarily mean that the alleged relationship between the characteristics of the compact city and travel behavior is not valid. In this paper, an attempt is made to assess the impact of different measures of spatial proximity, in casu between housing and the job market, on commuting distances in a quantitative way. This is done for the region of Flanders and Brussels (the northern part of Belgium), taking into account disruptions by the modifiable areal unit problem and spatial autocorrelation. The authors conclude that relationships between characteristics of spatial proximity and average commuting distances in Flanders and Brussels also appear to exist at the regional scale, emphasizing the importance of a high residential density, an equal jobs-housing balance and a good accessibility of the labor market, both within and outside areas that correspond to the compact city model.

01147878

10-1226

English

19p

2010

Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting

DVD

References; Tables (1)

Commuting; Housing; Travel patterns; Travel surveys; Trip length

Compact cities

Brussels (Belgium); Flanders (Belgium)

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2010 Paper #10-1226

TRIS, TRB

Jan 25 2010 10:32AM