Population, land use and travel - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 22

2 Population, land use and travel

2.1 Introduction
In the previous chapter we described the changes in mobility arising from economic
growth in general and from investment in transport infrastructure and private car
ownership in particular. Because of the scale and pervasiveness of these changes it is
easy to overlook the significance of other factors which affect travel. In this chapter we
look at changes in these other factors - in the characteristics of the population, in the
spatial patterning of land use and in the mix of human activities and their patterning
in time. We explain and report on each of these before finally examining their overall
outcome as reflected in trends in personal travel,
We begin by considering changes in overall population numbers and their spatial
distribution (2.2). We then look at the socio-economic characteristics of the population
in terms of age structure (2.3), household composition (2.4) and economic activity
(2.5). (In practice these are inter-related.)
People's choices of activity outside their home are conditioned by the pattern of land
use development and its relationship to the networks of different transport modes. The
pattern which has evolved over the last fifty years is the product of social and economic
forces on the one hand and public policy in the field of town planning on the other. We
identify the main trends and their transport implications in section 2.6.
In section 2.7 we look at changing patterns of personal activity as reflected in the
number, purpose and timing of trips. This feeds into final sections on travel itself which
first identify overall changes in the distance people travel by purpose and mode (2.8)
and then explore variations in travel amongst groups within the population (2.9).

2.2 Population and settlement
For planning purposes two aspects of population are fundamental - overall numbers
and how these are distributed spatially in the pattern of settlement.
Between 1951 and 1991 the population of Great Britain grew fairly slowly from 49.2
to 55.9 million. Since 1991 however the population of England has increased quite
sharply (from 47.9 to 50.1 million). By contrast it has increased only marginally in
Wales (to 3.0 million) and declined marginally in Scotland (to 5.1 million).
The rate of overall population change is the product of two separate factors - net
natural change (itself the difference between the number of births and deaths) and
net migration (the difference between the number of people leaving and entering
the country). The 1960s and 70s were characterised by net out-migration and the