Transferring Urban Mobility Studies in Tehran, Istanbul, and Cairo to Other Large MENA Cities: Steps toward Sustainable Transport

2021

Sustainability

Self Cite

The determinants of residential location choice have not been investigated in many developing countries. This paper examines this topic, including the influence of urban travels on house location decision-making in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Based on 8284 face-to-face interviews in Istanbul, Tehran, and Cairo, the dummy variable of residential location choice, including two categories of mobility reasons and other factors, was modeled by binary probit regression modeling. By means of receiver-operating characteristic analysis, the cutoff value of commuting distance and the time passed from the last relocation was estimated. Finally, the significant difference between the value of these two variables for people with different house location reasons were tested by Mann–Whitney U-test. The results show that the eight variables of shopping-entertainment mode choice in faraway places, frequency of public transit trips, neighborhood attractiveness perception, age, number of driving licenses in household, commuting distance, number of accessed facilities, and the (walkable) accessibility of facilities influence the residential self-selections. People who chose their current home based on mobility commute a daily mean distance of 8596 m and relocated less than 15.5 years ago, while those who chose their home based on other reasons, such as socioeconomics or personal reasons, commute longer and moved to a new house more than 15.5 years ago. This shows how the attitudes of people about residential location have changed in the MENA region, but there are still contextual differences to high-income countries.

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 54%

Residential Location Choice in Istanbul, Tehran, and Cairo: The Importance of Commuting to Work

2021

Sustainability

Self Cite

“…(Since the culture and religion, geography and climate, infrastructure, and several other factors are similar in these cities, it makes sense to analyze the city-level samples in one overall sample and analyze them together. Moreover, the studies and findings of these three cities together are generalizable and transferable to 27 large cities of more than one million inhabitants in the region [34]); (2) Are the commuting distances different in these three cities? ; (3) What are the differences between the characteristics of urban commute travel in these three cities?…”

Section: Research Questions and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 94%

Urban Commute Travel Distances in Tehran, Istanbul, and Cairo: Weighted Least Square Models

2020

Urban Science

Self Cite

A very large part of the literature on urban commute travels is related to high-income countries. The determinants of urban commute trip distances are not clear in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); thus, this study attempts to shed light on this topic in relation to Tehran, Istanbul, and Cairo. The objective is to clarify which environmental and human factors are correlated with commuting distance in these cities. Using primary disaggregate data produced by surveys in the three cities (n = 8237) in 2017, weighted least square regressions showed that fifteen significant or highly significant variables, including individual and household characteristics, mobility decisions, residential location, and land use attributes, predict the lengths of urban commute trips in the MENA sample. Unlike western countries, age and gender are not significant predictors of commute distance in MENA large cities. The results of independent-sample Kruskal–Wallis test show that there is a significant difference between the mean one-way commute travel distances in the three cities (Tehran: 9096 m, Istanbul: 10839 m, and Cairo: 6670 m); however, there are some similarities in the determinants of commute distance in the three cities. The results can be adopted to reduce commute trip lengths by providing a more connected street network and accessible neighborhood-level facilities.

“…As a result, the neighborhood-level confidence levels were 4.5% to 4.7% for individual variables and 1.8% to 2.4% for household variables. The data were undertaken in a way that a neighborhood-level representativeness was resulted by covering between 0.39 and 7.84 percent of the neighborhood population when estimating the percentages based on the individuals and between 1.37 and 33.71 percent for the households [32]. Out of 8284 respondents in the three cities, 4543 of them worked and answered the commute mode choice question at the same time.…”

Section: Data and Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Land Use and Individual Correlates of Pedestrian Commuting: Who Walks to Their Work or Place of Study in the Large Cities of the MENA Region?

Sierpiński

2022

Sustainability

Self Cite

The body of research on the determinants of pedestrian commuting and the characteristics of on-foot commuters at the international level and especially in the Global South is inconsistent; hence, this study focuses on this topic with the case of megacities in the Middle East and North Africa. The study is based on 8284 face-to-face interviews with respondents in the three cities, 4543 of whom worked, and of those 4543, 658 individuals walked to their work or place of study. By using binary logistic regression, the determinants of walking to work were identified. Age, household car ownership, last relocation time, intersection density, number of accessed facilities from home, average walking accessibility to neighborhood amenities, and commuting distance are the significant determinants of on-foot commuting. The study identifies younger commuters with fewer cars or no driving license living in neighborhoods with connected street networks as the walkers. The results of the Mann–Whitney U Test show that there is a significant difference between the values of these determinants for walking commuters and those who commute by other modes. Based on these findings, this paper encourages urban planners and decision-makers of the MENA region to use urban land use, including street networks and access to local facilities, to motivate commuters to commute on foot, especially those who work within a walkable distance to their work or place of study.