Frans M. Dieleman

Urban Form and Travel Behaviour: Micro-level Household Attributes and Residential Context:

Many countries now have policies to reduce distances travelled by private car and to favour the use of public transport, cycling and walking. The development of compact urban forms and the design of urban communities which favour walking are seen as particularly effective strategies for reducing car dependency. The factors which determine travel behaviour are not fully understood, so that effective policies influencing travel patterns are difficult to formulate. Apart from urban form and design, personal attributes and circumstances have an impact on modal choice and distances travelled. People with higher incomes are more likely to own and use a private car than low-income households. Families with children use cars more often than one-person households. The purpose of a trip-work, shopping and leisure—also influences travel mode and distance. We used the Netherlands National Travel Survey (OVG) to explore some of these relationships in more depth. The relative importance of personal attributes and the characteristics of residential environments as determinants of modal choice and travel distance were explored. Both sets of factors maintain a clear, strong relationship with travel behaviour in multivariate models of travel behaviour.

Modelling residential mobility; a review of recent trends in research

Recent studies add to the large body ofliterature on residential mobility bypresenting a fresh view of the residentialmobility process. At the micro level, newresearch sheds light on the jointdecision-making by members of a householdregarding a residential move, and clarifies thelink between place of residence and place ofwork. There are also many new studies onfinding an alternative dwelling if the mostpreferred house is unavailable. Householdrelocation is strongly embedded in housingmarket conditions at the local and nationallevel. Recent studies analyse variations in themobility process over space and time.

Travel behaviour in Dutch monocentric and policentric urban systems

Abstract In this paper, we analyse how monocentric and policentric urban structures affect modal choice and travel distances for different travel purposes in the Netherlands. The analysis is based on data from the Dutch National Travel Survey 1998. Here we distinguish four kinds of urban systems: one monocentric and three types of policentric systems. The evidence on how the structure of urban regions affects travel behaviour is mixed. Regarding modal choice, deconcentration of urban land uses encourages driving and discourages the use of public transport as well as cycling and walking. However, in terms of distance travelled per person, the results of the relocation of jobs and residences to suburban locations are less commuting in some urban regions, and longer commuting distances in others. The longer commute may also be an effect of the strong spatial planning policies in the Netherlands.

Policies for Urban Form and their Impact on Travel: The Netherlands Experience

This paper documents an evaluation of the consequences of the Netherlands national physical planning policy for an individuals travel behaviour. Four components of this policy are considered: the concentrated decentralisation of the 1970s and 1980s; the strict compact-city policy of the 1980s and 1990s; the A-B-C location policy; and the spatial retailing policy. Using data from the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey, the article addresses the following questions. Did physical planning reduce the use of the private car and promote the use of public transport together with cycling and walking? Did physical planning lead to shorter travel distances and times? The analysis suggests that national spatial planning has been most effective in retaining high shares of cycling and walking in the large and medium-sized cities, in particular for shopping trips. In terms of travel time, however, spatial policy seems to have been less successful. The building of new towns and, more recently, the development of greenfield neighbourhoods close to cities do not appear to have reduced commuting times. Alternative strategies to promote the use of public transport, the bicycle and walking through the regulation of land use are discussed. Relaxing some of the present spatial planning controls is suggested to reduce car use and travel times.

Tenure Changes in the Context of Micro-level Family and Macro-level Economic Shifts

Almost all the work to date on tenure changes, specifically the move from rent to own, has been derived from cross-sectional analysis of this important housing market decision. Economists have emphasised the investment nature of the housing consumption decision, while demographers and geographers have investigated tenure change in relationship to the demographic characteristics of the household. Now, the developing notions of life-course analysis and the availability of longer panel series enable us to investigate not just the demographic relatives of tenure change, but the critical aspects of timing as well. Specifically, many couples choose to buy and make the transition to a family within 2-3 years. We show also that tenure change is influenced by both spatial and temporal economic contexts.

Housing Careers in the United States, 1968-93: Modelling the Sequencing of Housing States:

The research in this paper focuses on the housing career during a households life-course. The housing career is the sequence of housing states defined in terms of tenure and the quality/price of the dwellings that households occupy while they make parallel careers in family status and the job market. The research brings out, more than the literature on separate residential moves, that many households are in a stable housing state over long stretches of their life-course. Housing careers are notable for having a relatively simple structure and, in general, an upward trend in quality, price and tenure of the sequence of dwellings occupied. As expected, there is a close relationship between the type of housing career and a households income and income growth. Regional variation in tenure composition and the price of the stock have a strong influence on the development of the housing careers in different regions.

Residential Mobility and Neighbourhood Outcomes

When households move they obviously weigh both the quality of the house and the quality of the neighbourhood in their decision process. But, to the extent that housing quality and neighbourhood quality are inter-twined it is difficult to disentangle the extent to which households are more focused on one or another of these two components of the choice process. This paper uses both cross-tabulations of the neighbourhood choices, and logit models of the actual choices, to examine the relative roles of neighbourhoods and houses in the choice process. The research is focused on the question of the extent to which households trade up in house quality, or neighbourhood quality or both, as outcomes of residential mobility. The research measures neighbourhood quality in both socio-economic and environmental dimensions. The study shows that many households not only move up in housing quality, but quite consistently also make gains in neighbourhood quality, often independently of gains in housing quality. Not surprisingly, the largest gains in neighbourhood quality are related to households who make the city/suburban transition in their housing moves. The research adds another dimension to the growing and extensive literature on neighbourhoods and their role in residential choice.

A microlevel analysis of residential context and travel time

The literature on the association between residential context and travel concentrates on distance traveled and modal choice, as these variables are the most important from an environmental perspective. Travel time has received less attention—an unfortunate oversight in our view, as peoples travel decisions are determined by time rather than by distance. By using data from the 1998 Netherlands National Travel Survey, we have considered travel time associated with trip purpose and transport mode, and have shown that sociodemographic factors and residential context influence daily travel time. Gender, number of workers in the household, age, and education all have a significant impact on travel time. The effects of car ownership and household income are only indirect, operating through mode choice and activity participation. Travel time for car drivers tends to rise with the degree of urbanisation of the residential environment. Further, in the polycentric metropolitan region of the Randstad, travel times by car are greater than in the monocentric regions of the country. It is also shown that in the Netherlands cycling and walking are still important travel modes, especially for shopping purposes. These results may be attributed to the long history of urbanisation and to planning policy in the Netherlands.

The Move to Housing Ownership in Temporal and Regional Contexts

A previous longitudinal study of households who make the change from renting to owning demonstrated the close connections between the tenure change and family composition. Specifically, there is a short period in which decisions with respect both to family changes and to house purchase occur. In this paper the authors extend that work and elaborate the findings by directly incorporating a measure of family composition change and analyzing its ‘triggering effect’ on the tenure change, and by enlarging the temporal and regional context analysis. Shifts from couples to families and increases in income trigger moves to ownership. Also, there are interaction effects between the regional contexts and time periods. A notable finding is that the economic climate affects some groups of households more than others. From the 1980s on, low-income households and one-earner families have been seriously affected in their ability to enter the homeowner housing market.

Planning the compact city: The randstad Holland experience

Abstract All over the world compact urban development is a topic of debate. However, practitioners and academics in many countries seem slow to synthesize suitable policies. Therefore, in this paper 30 years of experience with compact urban development is projected against the backdrop of the international discussion on this issue. The Dutch experience confirms the legitimacy of many arguments and findings presented in the international literature. Yet, Dutch practices put the policys success into perspective. It appears to be less successful when related to mobility effects and the spatial consequences of urban growth. The relative success of compact urban development was mainly owing to the specific conditions under which the policy was implemented. As these conditions are now changing, it remains to be seen whether this policy will be seriously jeopardized. In the event that planners elsewhere pursue compact urban development within their territory, cognizance of the Dutch experience may help them to ...