Project Summary
This dissertation is an empirical study of land use and travel behavior comparing sixteen mixed-use centers and auto-oriented corridors in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County, based on individual travel data collected from the 2005 South Bay Travel Survey. The first part of my dissertation tests the New Urbanist claim that neotraditional urban design promotes more walking trips and discourages automobile trips by regressing individual automobile and walking trips on a vector of sociodemographic and attitudinal variables for mixed-use centers and auto-oriented corridors in the South Bay area. Instrumental variable regressions are also used to control for residential location choice and self-selection bias. The results suggest that individuals residing in mixed-use centers tend to take more walking trips than those residing in auto-oriented corridors while individuals residing in mixed-use centers tend to drive equally as much as individuals residing in auto-oriented corridors. The second part of my dissertation compares individual automobile and walking trips for the South Bay study areas by race and ethnicity and analyzes the interaction between race/ethnicity and ethnic change on driving and walking behavior. The results suggest that African-Americans are less likely to drive and Asians are less likely to walk compared to other racial/ethnic groups; additionally, significant interaction between race/ethnicity and ethnic change were reported for Latinos.
