Urban Form and Household Activity‐Travel Behavior

Abstract

Cities and metropolitan regions face several challenges including urban sprawl, auto dependence and congestion, and related environmental and human health effects. Examining the spatial characteristics of daily household activity-travel behavior holds important implications for understanding and addressing urban transportation issues. Research of this sort can inform development of urban land use policy that encourages the use of local opportunities, potentially leading to reduced motorized travel. This article examines the potential household activity-travel response to a planned metropolitan polycentric hierarchy of activity centers. Behavioral observations have been drawn from an activity-travel survey conducted in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area during the mid-1990s. Evidence presented from exploratory analysis indicates an urban/suburban differential, with less daily travel and smaller activity spaces for urban households. Investigation of the travel reduction potential of the proposed land-use strategy suggests that location effects could be offset by adjustments to household sociodemographic and mobility characteristics. Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing.

Optimal Intra-Urban Hierarchy of Activity Centers—A Minimized Household Travel Energy Consumption Approach

“…An extensive literature has developed over the last quarter century documenting relationships between travel behavior and patterns of urbanization [61][62][63]. However, empirical findings have been quite inconsistent about whether a monocentric or polycentric urban spatial structure tends to help reduce HTEC, as summarized by Buliung and Kanaroglou [64] in a comprehensive literature review on this issue.…”

Measures of Transport-Related Social Exclusion: A Critical Review of the Literature

“…Buliung et al [108] have mentioned that the MCP is a supplementary measure of traditional area-based measures (e.g., ellipses), and have used the measure to explore weekday-to-weekend and day-to-day variation of travel behaviour. Using the MCP measure, Buliung and Kanaroglou [120] have shown that the size of activity spaces varies between CBD-based households and sub-urban households. Using a similar concept, Rogalsky [122] has created a Minimum convex polygon (MCP) based measure has recently been introduced into travel behaviour research (Figure 4) [118,120].…”

“…They have linked the outcomes of these measures with travellers' characteristics and have found this potentially useful in understanding travel behaviour. Minimum convex polygon (MCP) based measure has recently been introduced into travel behaviour research (Figure 4) [118,120]. It was first introduced in the ecology literature in the late 1940s as an approach for measuring animal home-range [124].…”

“…Different methods of deriving the boundary of activity spaces have been proposed in the literature including standard distance circle (SDC) [83,120], standard deviational ellipse (SDE) [84,120,121], minimum convex polygon (MCP) [120], polygonal generalised travel area [122], buffering along travelled routes [84], and area generated by using the furthest distance activity (FDA) location from the home [67,82]. In addition, although Rai et al [119] have conceptually developed three additional measures associated with capturing the boundary of human activity spaces such as super-ellipse, cassini oval, and bean curve, the application of these concepts has not been reported in the literature.…”

“…Buliung and Kanaroglou [120] have generated a standard distance circle (SDC) using standard distance (SD) of activity locations as radius centred on the mean centre of activity locations (Figure 1). Using the SDC measure, they have shown that the size (area) of activity spaces for sub-urban households are more dispersed than urban households.…”