The Entrenchment of Urban Dispersion: Residential Preferences and Location Patterns in the Dispersed City

Abstract

The paper portrays three aspects of urban dispersion: urban structure, residents' location and land-use preferences, and social ecology. To explain the dynamic inherent in this form of urbanisation, it suggests an explanatory model concentrating on shifts in the respective importance of space, place and proximity associated with the passage from traditional monocentric to dispersed urban form. The paper draws its empirical substance from the Kitchener Census Metropolitan Area, one of the most dispersed metropolitan regions in Canada. The Kitchener case study highlights the defining characteristics of a dispersed urban structure: high automobile dependence, a scattering of origins and destinations, and a resulting absence of pronounced accessibility gradients. The paper also reports the results of a survey which indicates a harmonisation of residents' preferences with the main features of dispersion. The case study ends by mapping the residential location patterns of two groups with a disproportionate influence on new urban development: high income households and families with children. Their concentric distribution is consistent with survey results. In the light of the prevailing transport-land-use relation and of residents' location choices and expressed preferences, the paper foresees a further entrenchment of the dispersed urban structure. The paper closes by explaining the limited success of most intensification policies and by exploring the possibility of injecting more diversity into the dispersed landscape in order to accommodate a growing variety of lifestyles.

Resident perceptions of natural resources between cities and across scales in the Pacific Northwest

“…Even in the most crowded cities, appreciation exists for features such as urban parks and greenspaces (Gidlöf-Gunnarsson and Öhrström 2007, Hoffman et al 2012, Lo and Jim 2012, bike trails (Krizek and Johnson 2006), dispersed development (Filion et al 1999), and walkability (Leyden 2003), which allows for maintenance of ecosystem goods and services alongside planning goals (e.g., Tratalos et al 2007). A goal of the City of Portland and the Multnomah County Climate Action Plan (City of Portland 2009) is to establish commercial services and amenities within a 20-minute walk of all residences.…”

Changing Patterns of Residential Centrality : Population and Household Shift in Large Canadian CMAs, 1971-1996.

“…The goodness-of-fit of the négative exponential statistical form of the population density distance-decay gradient has given way to more complex, polynomial formulations which place the main concentration of high density at or near the centre but recognize a secondary density peak, or several such peaks, in outlying parts. When polynomial models produce the best goodness-of-fit statistics, the implication is that centrality is being challenged by alternative decentralized locations (Filion et al, 1999;McDonald, 1989;Richardson, 1988;Papageorgiou, 1989;Thrall, 1988). Throughout the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, greatly elevated density peaks were recorded adjacent the essentially non-residential CBD -a pattern best captured by the négative exponential form of the distancedecay gradient (Newling, 1969; on Toronto see Latham and Yeates, 1970).…”

Suburban Innovations

“…A new model of development-the dispersed suburb modeltook shape over the 15 years that followed World-War-II. The dispersed suburb is characterized by a near universal reliance on the car and land use patterns that are adapted to this form of transportation: generally low density, zonal specialization, dispersion of structuring activities (employment, retailing, institutions;Filion, Bunting, & Warriner, 1999). The influence of heavy automobile use was also mirrored in other land use innovations shaping the dispersed suburb.…”