Abstract
This chapter describes the concept of location efficiency (also called smart growth), which refers to land-use development patterns that maximize the ease with which people can obtain desired goods, services, and activities, and that minimize the need for physical travel. Location efficiency includes factors such as land-use density, land-use mix, roadway connectivity, and transportation system diversity. Improving location efficiency helps reduce transportation costs, including road and parking facility costs, consumer costs, traffic risk, energy consumption, pollutant emissions, and other environmental impacts. It also benefits people who are transportation disadvantaged and increases housing affordability.
INTRODUCTION
Land use and transportation are two sides of the same coin. Transportation affects land use, and land use affects transportation. Decisions that affect one also affect the other. As a result, it is important to coordinate transportation and land-use planning decisions so they are complementary. Land-use planning can help create more efficient transportation systems that reduce per-capita vehicle travel and energy consumption, for example. This is referred to as location-efficient development or smart growth.
To understand how land use affects travel patterns it is useful to consider the concept of accessibility. Accessibility (or just access) is the ability to reach desired goods, services, activities, and destinations—together called opportunities. A stepladder provides access to the top shelf in your kitchen. A store provides access to goods. Libraries, telephones, and the Internet provide access to information. Paths and roads provide access from one destination to another by walking, cycling, automobile, and bus.
Access is the ultimate goal of most transportation, excepting the small portion of travel in which movement is an end in itself (e.g., cruising, historic train rides, horseback riding, and jogging). Even recreational travel usually has a destination, such as a resort or a campsite. (Mobility as an end in itself is discussed later in this chapter).
Four general factors affect accessibility:
1. Mobility—that is, physical movement. Mobility can be provided by walking, cycling, public transit, ride sharing, taxi, automobiles, trucks, and other modes.
2. Mobility substitutes, such as telecommunications and delivery services. These services can provide access to some types of goods and activities, particularly those involving information.
3. Transportation system connectivity, which refers to the directness of links and the density of connections in a path or road network.
4. Land-use patterns—that is, the geographic distribution of activities and destinations. When real estate experts say “location, location, location,” they mean “accessibility, accessibility, accessibility.”
LAND-USE IMPACTS ON TRANSPORTATION
Land-use factors (also called spatial development, community design, urban design, or the built environment) can affect transport activity in several ways.[1] When worksites are dispersed and located in areas without good walking and cycling facilities, for example, most employees will drive, but if the same businesses locate in commercial centers with good walking and cycling facilities, and with good transit services, a significant portion of employees will use alternative modes.
Planners increasingly realize the importance of integrating transportation and land-use decisions to increase accessibility and improve travel options, thereby reducing the amount of motor vehicle travel required to meet people’s needs and serve economic activities. This can help achieve a variety of planning objectives, including reduced congestion, energy conservation, pollution and emission reductions, infrastructure cost savings, increasing household affordability, and improving economic opportunities for disadvantaged populations.
Specific land-use factors that affect transportation are described in the following sections.[2]
Density
Density refers to the number of people or jobs in a given area. Increased density tends to reduce per-capita automobile ownership and use, and to increase use of alternative modes. Fig. 1 shows how per-capita vehicle mileage tends to decline with density in U.S. urban areas. Many other studies find similar results.
Increased density tends to reduce per capita vehicle travel.
Density at both origins and destinations affect travel behavior. One study found that increasing urban residential population density to 40 people per acre increased transit use from about 2 to 7%, while increasing densities in commercial centers to 100 employees per acre resulted in an additional 4% increase in transit use, to an 11% total mode share.[3] Both work trips and shopping trips are affected by population and employment densities.
Land-Use Mix
Mixed land use (such as locating appropriate businesses and public services in or adjacent to residential areas) can reduce per-capita vehicle travel. It tends to reduce the distances that residents must travel for some services and allows more use of walking and cycling for such trips. It also can reduce some employees’ commute distances (some residents may obtain jobs at nearby businesses), and employees who work in a mixed-use commercial area are significantly more likely to commute by alternative modes.
Roadway Design
Roadway design can affect travel behavior in several ways. A connected road network provides better accessibility than a conventional hierarchical road network with a large portion of dead-end streets. Increased connectivity can reduce vehicle travel by reducing travel distances between destinations and by improving walking and cycling conditions, particularly where paths provide shortcuts, so walking and cycling are relatively faster than driving. This also supports transit use.
Residents Per Square Mile
Fig. 1 Density vs vehicle travel for U.S. urban areas.
Transit Service Quality
Per-capita automobile ownership and motor vehicle mileage tend to decline as transit service quality in an area improves. Transit service quality includes the convenience, frequency, comfort, and security of transit vehicles and stations or stops, as well as the quality of walking conditions in nearby areas.
Site Design and Building Orientation
Some research indicates that people walk more and drive less in areas with traditional pedestrian-oriented commercial districts where building entrances connect directly to the sidewalk than in areas with automobile-oriented commercial strips where buildings are set back and separated by large parking lots (Moudon, 1996).[5] This type of building orientation improves pedestrian access and creates a more attractive pedestrian environment.
Cumulative Impacts
The transportation effects of density and clustering, land-use mix, transit access, street design, and building design tend to be cumulative. As an area becomes more urbanized (more dense and mixed activities, higher land prices, and less parking), transportation diversity tends to increase, with fewer trips by automobile and a greater portion of trips by walking, cycling, and public transit.
Holtzclaw[6] finds that average vehicle ownership, vehicle travel, and vehicle expenditure per household decline with increasing residential densities and proximity to public transit, holding constant other demographic factors such as household size and income. The formulas below summarize his findings. An online calculator, This View of Density Calculator (www.sflcv.org/density), uses this model to predict the effects of different land-use patterns on travel behavior (Fig. 2).
This figure illustrates how density and transit accessibility affect household vehicle mileage. The Transit Accessibility Index (TAI) indicates daily transit service nearby.
Ewing, Pendall, and Chen[7] developed a sprawl index based on 22 specific variables related to land-use density, mix, street connectivity, and commercial clustering. The results indicate a high correlation between these factors and travel behavior: a higher sprawl index is associated with higher per-capita vehicle ownership and use, and lower use of alternative modes. Other studies also find that per-capita vehicle travel is significantly lower in higher-density, multimodal urban neighborhoods than in automobile-oriented suburban neighborhoods.
Fig. 2 Annual VMT per household.
Lawton[8] found that average daily motor vehicle miles per adult decreased from 19.8 in the least urbanized residential neighborhoods to 6.3 in the most urban neighborhoods, due to fewer and shorter automobile trips. Even modest land-use changes can provide significant vehicle travel reductions if they are reinforced by other mobility strategies, such as commute trip reduction programs (which encourage commuters to use alternative modes) and parking pricing or cash-out (travelers can choose to receive cash instead of parking subsidies).
As a result, residents of more urbanized areas drive significantly fewer miles and rely more on alternative modes than residents of suburban and rural communities, as indicated in Fig. 3.
Urban residents drive less and use transit, cycling, and walking more than elsewhere.
LOCATION EFFICIENCY
Location-efficient development (also called smart growth) refers to more compact and mixed development located in compact centers designed for walking, cycling, and transit. Table 1 compares the two types of land-use patterns.
Per-capita motor vehicle travel tends to be significantly higher in automobile-dependent areas compared with the same demographic and businesses activity in Smart Growth locations.[10] Table 2 summarizes typical reductions in Vehicle Miles of Travel (VMT) resulting from various Smart Growth developments. This also indicates that location efficiency significantly reduces per-capita vehicle travel. Because of these impacts, planners are increasingly including land-use management strategies to achieve transportation planning objectives, including improved accessibility, reduced infrastructure costs, reduced accidents, and energy conservation.
HOW LOCATION-EFFICIENT DEVELOPMENT IS IMPLEMENTED
Location-efficient development is implemented by developers, usually with support and encouragement from local governments. It often is implemented as part of Smart Growth and New Urbanist planning.[11] In practice, location-efficient development consists of redeveloping older urban residential neighborhoods and commercial centers, creating new transit-oriented suburban neighborhoods, and improving walking conditions, cycling conditions, and transit services. It also can involve the application of mobility management (also called transportation demand management), which includes various policies and programs that encourage people to reduce their automobile travel and use alternative travel options.[13'10] These programs include incentives for more compact, infill development, and parking management to reduce the amount of parking required at each destination.
Fig. 3 Average daily trips per resident by geographic area.
Table 1 Comparing automobile dependency and smart growth
| Automobile dependency | Smart growth | |
| Density | Lower-density, dispersed activities | Higher-density, clustered activities |
| Growth pattern | Urban periphery (greenfield) development | Infill (brownfield) development |
| Land-use mix | Homogeneous (single-use, segregated) land uses | Mixed land use |
| Scale | Large scale. Larger buildings and blocks, wide roads. Less detail, because people experience the landscape at a distance, as motorists | Human scale. Smaller buildings, blocks, and roads. Careful detail, because people experience the landscape up close, as pedestrians |
| Public services (shops, schools, parks) | Regional, consolidated, larger. Requires automobile
access |
Local, distributed, smaller. Accommodates walking access |
| Transport | Automobile-oriented transportation and land-use patterns, poorly suited for walking, cycling, and transit | Multimodal transportation and land-use patterns that support walking, cycling, and public transit |
| Connectivity | Hierarchical road network with numerous loops and dead-end streets, and unconnected sidewalks and paths, with many barriers to nonmotorized travel | Highly connected roads, sidewalks, and paths, allowing relatively direct travel by motorized and nonmotorized modes |
| Street design | Streets designed to maximize motor vehicle traffic volume and speed | Streets designed to accommodate a variety of activities. Traffic calming |
| Planning process | Unplanned, with little coordination between jurisdictions and stakeholders | Planned and coordinated between jurisdictions and stakeholders |
| Public space | Emphasis on the private realm (yards, shopping malls, gated communities, private clubs) | Emphasis on the public realm (streetscapes, pedestrian environment, public parks, public facilities) |
One strategy for encouraging households to choose more accessible locations is to offer location-efficient mortgages (LEMs), which means that lenders recognize the potential savings of a more accessible housing location when assessing a household’s borrowing ability. It considers transportation and housing costs together, so vehicle cost savings are treated as additional income that can be spent on a mortgage. This gives home buyers an added incentive to choose location-efficient residences and tends to encourage more infill development as opposed to more automobile-dependent development at the urban periphery.[15-17]
Location-efficient mortgages are implemented by residential mortgage lenders, often with the support and encouragement of government agencies such as Fannie Mae and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Lenders use a model to determine which locations have lower transportation costs and, therefore, can qualify for higher mortgage payments. The following factors can be considered in such models:
• Residential density
• Land-use mix—that is, the number of public services within convenient walking distance (schools, shops, parks, medical services, pharmacy, etc.).
• Proximity to high-quality transit (such as a rail transit station or a bus line with frequent service).
• Quality of walking and cycling conditions.
Table 2 Infill VMT reductions
| Location | Description | VMT reduction (%) |
| Atlanta | 138-acre brownfield, mixed-use project | 15-52 |
| Baltimore | 400 housing units and 800 jobs on waterfront infill project | 55 |
| Dallas | 400 housing units and 1,500 jobs located 0.1 mile from Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) station | 38 |
| Montgomery county | Infill site near major transit center | 42 |
| San diego | Infill development project | 52 |
| West palm beach | Auto-dependent infill project | 39 |
• Car-share services within convenient walking distance (vehicle rental services designed to substitute for automobile ownership).
• Parking management (reduced parking requirements and renting parking spaces separately from building space, so residents who do not own an automobile are not forced to pay for parking they do not need).
BENEFITS AND COSTS
Location-efficient development can provide several benefits:
• Consumers benefit from more housing, shopping, and transportation choices, and from financial savings. Nondrivers in particular benefit from having housing options designed for maximum accessibility, as well as financial savings from reduced driving and parking costs. Per-household transportation expenditures tend to be lower for residents in such areas. Residents of cities with high levels of transit ridership tend to spend significantly less per capita on transportation than residents of more automobile-dependent cities,[2] as illustrated below. Similarly, McCann[18] found that households in more automobile-dependent communities on average spend more than 20% of their household budgets on transportation (more than $8,500 annually), whereas those in communities with more diverse transportation systems spend less than 17% (less than $5,500 annually), representing thousands of dollars in annual savings.
• By reducing per-capita vehicle ownership and use, location-efficient development tends to reduce per-capita traffic congestion and delays, road and parking facility costs, traffic crashes, pollution, energy consumption, and sprawl.
• By improving walking and cycling conditions, an increased portion of travel involves physical activity, which provides health benefits.
• Developers can benefit from having more design flexibility, including more opportunities for infill development and reduced parking costs. Also, LEMs increase the amount a household can spend on housing. It creates new markets and financing options. The New Urbanist movement promotes this type of development from an industry perspective.
• Regional economies tend to benefit when consumers shift their transportation expenditures from vehicles and fuel to transit services or general consumer goods.
There may be costs associated with higher population density in urban neighborhoods.1-19-1 Higher density may increase congestion intensity (i.e., when people drive, they face greater congestion delay, although because they drive shorter distances and have alternative modes, they face less congestion delay per capita). Some households that choose location-efficient housing that has limited parking eventually may purchase additional motor vehicles if their needs change or they become wealthier, thus increasing local traffic and parking problems. This may require parking management. Some location-efficient housing includes resident covenants that restrict vehicle ownership. Urban infill may also cause displacement of lower-income households (gentrification).
EQUITY IMPACTS
Location-efficient housing and location-efficient mortgages tend to increase equity by allowing households that own fewer than average automobiles to avoid paying for parking they don’t use, and by increasing housing options for lower-income households and nondrivers. Residential parking requirements reflect suburban, middle-class car ownership rates that are excessive for many households, particularly those with lower incomes. This is both unfair and regressive. Location-efficient development is optional, so consumers will choose it only if they consider themselves to be better off overall.
Location-efficient development and location-efficient mortgages tend to benefit lower-income households by providing financial savings and improving affordable transport and housing options.
Location-efficient development is most appropriate in urban neighborhoods that have good access (services and activities are easily available by walking and transit). It can be implemented by regional or local governments, or by not-for-profit organizations or individual businesses.
BEST PRACTICES
Here are some specific recommendations for implementing location-efficient development:
• It should include a variety of land-use and transportation features that improve access and mobility options, such as pedestrian and cycling improvements, transit improvements, and mixed land use.
• It should include a range of housing types and prices, so that people in various life-cycle stages and income classes can choose such housing.
• Parking requirements should be reduced or eliminated for location-efficient housing. Rather than being included with housing, parking should be rented separately, so that households pay only for the amount of parking they actually use.
• Parking should be managed to prevent spillover problems.
