Impact Of Urban Built Environment On The Residential Commuting Behavior

With the rapid urbanization and motorization in China, urban built environment has changed gradually. Since the 21th century, automobile ownership grows with the household incremental income, which promotes the dependence on automobile commuting with increasing the commuting distance and duration caused by the expansion of urban size. As for Shanghai, built-up areas increase from 550 square meters to 886 square meters between 2000 and 2012. Simultaneously, ownership of private cars increases from 50.4 thousands to 1411.6 thousands. Based on the investigation from the residents in the central city of Shanghai, average commuting time in central city increases from 41.4 minutes to 43.2 minutes between 2004 and 2009. Urban sprawl and motorization hinder sustainable development because of serious traffic congestion and environmental pollution. In recent years, scholars in this field are discussing how to reduce negative externalities of agglomeration and promote the residents’life quality. Urban and transport planners have attempted to manipulate land-use and urban design to promote green modes of travel. Although there is a mushrooming literature scrutinizing the nexus of travel behavior and the built environment in developed countries, little is known about the same relationship in China. This paper has explored the impact of built environment on residents’commuting behavior through the application of econometric model and ArcMap. Our research concludes that urban built environment has a significant effect on the choice of motorized commuting. Specifically, after controlling other factors, improving residential areas’population density, mixed land use and the proportion of crossroads may help refrain the choice of automobile commuting, while urban built environment of work place has little impact on the choice of residential commuting mode. In terms of commuting time, urban built environment also has a significant impact on residential commuting duration after controlling social-economics of residents and commuting mode. Specifically, the improvement of employment density of residence, population density of work place, density of road and proportion of crossroads, can help reduce residential commuting duration. However, increased population densities of residence and employment density of work place will increase residents’commuting duration. As for land-use mixture, the empirical results do not support the theoretical predictions. As a result, in sub-district level, people’s commuting behavior should be optimized by synthesizing multiple tools of land use planning. First, we should hold on high-density development strategy. At the same time, we should also take jobs-housing balance into consideration, which means residence and employment should be coordinated development in sub-district level. Our findings suggest that increasing jobs in residence or residents in workplace can help avoid jobs-housing separation. In terms of diversity of land use planning, we should stick to the idea of mixed land use, and avoid single land utilization way. In other words, if residential areas are surrounded with shopping and entertainment districts, it can offer more opportunities to work, go shopping and have fun. Finally, when it comes to road network planning, we should pay more attention to the forms of the road network layout with grid aiming at improving the accessibility of road network and develop public transport system, especially rail system. Pedestrian and cyclist-oriented design should be focused on. Besides, built environment has different impacts on commuting behavior due to heterogeneity of individual socio-economic characteristics. Therefore, only if considered different commuting behavior of different communities, urban traffic management measures could be formulated successfully.