| dc.description.abstract | Much research has given importance to studying the relationship between the built environment and travel behaviour to find measures to the growing problems related to increasing the demand for energy and urban pollution associated with the transportation sector.
In many studies, the number of suburbanites moving from inner cities has increased, which could be caused by many factors, like the high cost of renting or owning an apartment in the inner city, whereas it is much cheaper in the suburbs or even close to a Suburban Centre, or it may be because they are looking for bigger houses with gardens and so on. So, it will be very important for both urban planners and policymakers to rethink the future of sustainable cities and what is going to happen to people's preferences for facilities if many people move to the suburbs, if they will adapt to what is locally available, or they will travel to the inner city to reach their preferences. If there are no local opportunities, will they drop or carry fewer frequent visits to cafés, restaurants, movie theatres, gymnastics clubs, concerts, and other cultural events? Moreover, if their preferences change with time.
Many questions were raised about this theme, so I will try through this thesis to highlight how the residential location influences vehicle miles travelled or using more sustainable travel modes and if suburban residents are largely car-dependent and drive long distances and their shares of walking, cycling and using public transport are low?
The research is an empirical study that analyses existing environments, measurements of revealed travel, mobility patterns, etc. This study highlights how the built environment influences travel, specifically how residential location impacts travel modes (Buchanan & Barnett, 2006).
There is extensive literature about the relationship between the built environment and travel. However, most of the studies on this theme have relied on the available statistical analyses of the travel surveys without indicating the possibility of proving causality. So, we will try through this research to offer strong evidence of the causal impacts through qualitative interviews and case studies compared with the mainstream studies on the relationship between the built environment and travel patterns.
The paper will also go in-depth into the reasons underlying the differences between suburban and inner-city residents' travel behaviour that has been observed in Stavanger and its surroundings, where the research argues that the built environment characteries such as residential location influence travel through their interactions with residents' rationales for activities' location and the choice of travel mode (Næss et al., 2018). | |