Reducing the Travel Requirements of the American City: An Investigation of Alternative Urban Spatial Structures

Abstract

Little attention has been given to investigating the potential for gradually restructuring the city so as to reduce its built-in requirements for transportation. This report investigates this potential by analyzing the transportation requirements of some alternative urban spatial structures. The effort is to deal with what are perceived to be the basic causes of urban transportation transportation requirements instead of examining only the symptoms of these problems. A computer-directed search procedure was developed and tested using 2 simple urban structures. These experiments form the basis for an investigation of a larger urban structure based on the 1970 urban pattern of the western part of King County, Washington. This study has demonstrated that a simple search algorithm can be a useful tool for finding spatial structures that have desired characteristics. Results indicated that by moving about one third to on half of the people and about one third of the jobs to other locations, very substantial reduction (50 per cent or more) in travel requirements could be obtained while also improving overall access levels. While structural changes of this magnitude arenot feasible in near future, many cities may be growing by this much in the next 20-30 years. The potential for non-transportation solutions appears to be a significant but projections, initial transit system design and a theoretical According to the author, what is most needed now is a way of identifying particular locations where it would be most beneficial to encourage new people/jobs to locate and orient programs and policies to encourage growth there.

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