Impacts of Local Land Use on Individual Modal Choice

Impacts of Local Land Use on Individual Modal Choice

In recent years, the planning of livable communities has emerged as a new paradigm. The concept of livable communities is related to both the spatial balance of working, playing, and living and the promotion of green modes of transportation, such as walking and biking. This study uses a disaggregate travel survey conducted by the Seoul Metropolitan Area in 2006. I applied a multi-level random intercept logit model to estimate the effects of land-use characteristics on the choice of green modes, holding a traveler's socio-demographic characteristics constant. The empirical results show that higher density and more mixed land-use development encourages people to walk and bike even when individuals have the same socio-economic characteristics. This paper demonstrates that land-use planning by itself can play a role in the creation of livable cities and the decline of greenhouse gas production.