Measuring Community Completeness: Jobs—Housing Balance, Accessibility, and Convenient Local Access to Nonwork Destinations

Using 2007 travel-diary data from metropolitan Chicago, I investigate what aspects of urban form contribute most to community completeness, as defined by internal tour capture for nonwork tours. I examine two distinct geographic scales: census-defined ‘places’, and synthetically constructed ‘centered communities’. Centered communities are defined as nonwork travel sheds centered upon well-defined concentrations of activity. Higher accessibility share (a new urban form measure defined in the paper) and higher mixed use both significantly predict greater community completeness, as do higher levels of residential or employment density. Furthermore, I find that mixed-use measures describe something other than simple proximity to job-based attractions; these measures also address the appropriate balance of activities necessary for a complete community. To build more-complete communities, planners need to ensure that local accessibility to a variety of destinations of interest is high relative to the regional accessibility to these same types of destinations outside the community.

[1]  Michael J. Greenwald.  The relationship between land use and intrazonal trip making behaviors : Evidence and implications , 2006 .

[2]  William H. Greene,et al.  Predicting transportation outcomes for LEED-ND Pilot Projects , 2013 .

[3]  Reid Ewing,et al.  Traffic Generated by Mixed-Use Developments—13-Region Study Using Consistent Built Environment Measures , 2011 .

[4]  A. Khattak,et al.  Travel behavior in neo-traditional neighborhood developments: A case study in USA , 2005 .

[5]  L. Frank,et al.  Sense of community and its relationship with walking and neighborhood design. , 2010, Social science & medicine.

[6]  K. Small,et al.  Population and employment densities: structure and change. , 1993, Journal of urban economics.

[7]  R. Cervero.  Land Uses and Travel at Suburban Activity Centers , 1991 .

[8]  Yingling Fan,et al.  Household Excess Travel and Neighbourhood Characteristics , 2011 .

[9]  Neil Sipe,et al.  Travel Self-Containment in Master Planned Estates: Analysis of Recent Australian Trends , 2007, Urban Policy and Research.

[10]  Reid Ewing,et al.  Travel and the Built Environment: A Synthesis , 2001 .

[11]  J. Levine,et al.  Intermetropolitan Comparison of Transportation Accessibility: Sorting Out Mobility and Proximity in San Francisco and Washington, D.C , 2010 .

[12]  G. Giuliano,et al.  SUBCENTERS IN THE LOS ANGELES REGION , 1991 .

[13]  Kelly J. Clifton,et al.  Evaluating neighborhood accessibility: possibilities and practicalities , 2001 .

[14]  J. Levine,et al.  A Choice-Based Rationale for Land Use and Transportation Alternatives , 2005 .

[15]  Lars Vilhuber,et al.  LEHD OnTheMap Technical Documentation , 2008 .

[16]  R. Cervero,et al.  Sub-centring and Commuting: Evidence from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1980-90 , 1998 .

[17]  Shannon J. Brines,et al.  Land use, residential density, and walking. The multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis. , 2009, American journal of preventive medicine.

[18]  Bert van Wee,et al.  Accessibility evaluation of land-use and transport strategies: review and research directions , 2004 .

[19]  John S Miller,et al.  Impact of Jobs–Housing Balance on Average Jurisdiction Commuting Times , 2011 .

[20]  Asad J. Khattak,et al.  Household Excess Travel and Neighborhood Characteristics: Associations and Trade-Offs , 2011 .

[21]  S. Handy.  Regional Versus Local Accessibility: Neo-Traditional Development and Its Implications for Non-work Travel , 1992 .

[22]  R. Cervero.  Jobs-Housing Balancing and Regional Mobility , 1989 .

[23]  R. Crane,et al.  DOES NEIGHBORHOOD DESIGN INFLUENCE TRAVEL?: A BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS OF TRAVEL DIARY AND GIS DATA , 1998 .

[24]  A. Duany,et al.  Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream , 2000 .

[25]  A. El-geneidy,et al.  The effect of neighbourhood characteristics, accessibility, home–work location, and demographics on commuting distances , 2010 .

[26]  John F. McDonald,et al.  Suburban Subcenters and Employment Density in Metropolitan Chicago , 1998 .

[27]  R. Cervero.  JOBS-HOUSING BALANCE REVISITED: TRENDS AND IMPACTS IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA. , 1996 .

[28]  M. Horner,et al.  A Spatial Dissimilarity-based Index of the Jobs—Housing Balance: Conceptual Framework and Empirical Tests , 2009 .

[29]  Debbie A. Niemeier,et al.  Measuring Accessibility: An Exploration of Issues and Alternatives , 1997 .

[30]  A. Santos,et al.  Summary of Travel Trends: 2009 National Household Travel Survey , 2011 .

[31]  K. Krizek.  Neighborhood services, trip purpose, and tour-based travel , 2003 .

[32]  K. Ahn,et al.  Five new towns in the Seoul metropolitan area and their attractions in non-working trips: Implications on self-containment of new towns , 2005 .

[33]  R. Ewing,et al.  Internalizing Travel by Mixing Land Uses: Study of Master-Planned Communities in South Florida , 2001 .

[34]  Christian L. Redfearn,et al.  The Topography of Metropolitan Employment: Identifying Centers of Employment in a Polycentric Urban Area ⁄ , 2007 .

[35]  R. Cervero.  Planned Communities, Self-containment and Commuting: A Cross-national Perspective , 1995 .

[36]  Marlon G. Boarnet,et al.  Land Use, Urban Design, and Nonwork Travel: Reproducing Other Urban Areas’ Empirical Test Results in Portland, Oregon , 2000 .

[37]  P. Mokhtarian,et al.  Do changes in neighborhood characteristics lead to changes in travel behavior? A structural equations modeling approach , 2007 .

[38]  Pavlos S. Kanaroglou,et al.  Urban Form and Household Activity‐Travel Behavior , 2006 .

[39]  C. Redfearn.  Persistence in urban form: The long-run durability of employment centers in metropolitan areas , 2009 .

[40]  G. Giuliano,et al.  Is the Journey to Work Explained by Urban Structure? , 1993 .