Research at the University of California Transportation Center SPRING 1998 NUMBER 12 CONTENTS A CCESS No. 12 Spring 1998 2 Travel by Design? RANDALL CRANE 8 Traditional Shopping Centers RUTH L. STEINER 14 Simulating Highway and Transit Effects JOHN D. LANDIS 20 Cars for the Poor KATHERINE M. O’REGAN & JOHN M. QUIGLEY 26 Will Electronic Home Shopping Reduce Travel? JANE GOULD & THOMAS F. GOLOB 32 Recent Papers in Print The University of California Transportation Center, founded in 1988, facilitates research, education, and public service for the entire UC system. Activities have centered on the Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, and Santa Barbara campuses. University of California Transportation Center 108 Naval Architecture Building Berkeley, CA 94720–1720 Tel: 510-643-5454 Fax: 510-643-5456 [email protected] http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~uctc Copyright © 1998 The Regents of the University of California Authors of papers reporting on UCTC research are solely responsible for their content. This research was sponsored by the US Department of Transportation and the California Department of Transportation, neither of which is liable for its content or use. Front cover: Paris EDITORIAL Traditions and Neotraditions long-standing tradition has city planners in the role of a few of them. They describe changing commute patterns as creative designers of towns and cities. Perhaps that jobs move from central cities to suburbs. They ask how rail A role is best illustrated in the new town plans of Great transit might affect land use patterns. In turn, they ask how Britain with their carefully designed settings for modern life, Neotraditional land use patterns might affect daily travel complete with decent housing, spacious parks, nearby job behavior—how they might promote walking to shops, transit sites, and high-quality public facilities and services. The basic riding to work, and fewer trips by car. idea holds that good physical settings make for good living. In In general they find empirical evidence on effects of that context, one of America’s most eminent sociologists once Neotraditional designs to be weak or nonexistent. As one of described city planning as the last stronghold of utopianism. our authors puts it, that’s “a wobbly foundation indeed for That image of city planners has been in abeyance in current transportation policy.” The findings emerging from recent decades. Once city planners got mixed up with public this evaluation research suggest that New Urbanism may be administrators, engineers, and economists, they seem to have promising more than it’s likely to deliver. Expectations of lost the utopian self-image. They then saw themselves as greatly reduced traffic congestion seem unduly optimistic. Not practical doers rather than as big-thinking urban architects. many suburbanites are ready to abandon their cars in favor of They became administrators of zoning laws, builders of infra- either light- or heavy-rail transit. Indeed, trend lines every- structure, analysts of costs and benefits, and designers of where portray persistently declining transit riding, even where simulation models. Hard stuff. new rail lines have been installed. And then, as suburban But the old tradition has come alive again. As in the early dispersion extends further, so too does demand for cars. That days of the 20th century, architects and urban designers turns out to be true among black workers commuting from are now advocating self-styled avant-garde city planning. central cities to suburban jobs, as it has been for white subur- Under banners labeled “New Urbanism” and “Neotraditional ban workers commuting to suburban jobs. Planning,” some contemporary urban designers are promot- These studies suggest that, despite attractive promises ing a renewed vision of livable cities. Harking back to 18th and of New Urbanism, new rail-transit systems, and even new 19th century models, the New Urbanists are nostalgically call- Internet links, near-term revolutions are unlikely. I find that ing for a return to physical town patterns of earlier times. discouraging, for I remain addicted to city planning’s visionary Their ideal has medium-density housing close to jobs, tradition, still wishing we could redesign our urban environ- retail shops, and civic institutions clustered in town centers. ments. But I know, of course, that behavioral changes do not Walking is a dominant mode of access, and automobiles play follow directly from changes in physical environments. I know, greatly reduced roles. Rail transit is a key ingredient: residents too, that cause-and-effect relationships must be demonstrated will prefer to travel by train, and stations will become the through systematic empirical observation, not merely by voic- magnets attracting activities to the town center. In turn, village ing a creative idea. life will make for cohesive social communities. So, until better evidence turns up, I expect we’ll be build- Early physical designs for Neotraditional towns have ing more suburbs in the present models and driving more cars been handsome. As alternatives to the drab, if not ugly, over more miles. Nevertheless, I hope we’ll continue to search physique of many contemporary American suburbs, they hold for ways to build better environments than we’ve so far great promise of pleasant living environments. It’s scarcely achieved. However prosperous the contemporary suburbs any wonder they’ve attracted enthusiastic responses in many have been as a setting for modern life, our long-standing quarters. tradition insists we can surely do much better. Several UCTC researchers have been examining prospects for New Urbanism. This issue of ACCESS reports on Melvin M. Webber Travel by Design? BY RANDALL CRANE ver the past few decades, most questions about land visible examples. The Florida resort town of Seaside, designed by use/transportation linkages have dealt with the Duany and Plater-Zyberk, is justly noted for the clapboard nos- influence of transportation infrastructure on devel- talgia of its houses and its weathered old-town style, although Oopment patterns. Analysts have examined how high- barely ten years old. Recent developments in Southern California ways and mass transit contribute to urban sprawl, how they affect and Portland also successfully feature side-garages, big front the local balance of jobs and housing, or how they affect popula- porches, fewer cul-de-sacs, and nostalgic building designs. tion density. There also exists a long, if less traveled, history of In addition to these aesthetic architectural elements, the viewing these linkages from the opposite direction: examining new developments often feature a substantial transportation how land use influences urban travel. agenda. As Ruth Steiner notes in this issue, New Urbanists want Recent work of the latter sort goes well beyond estimating residents to walk more and drive less. Few would quarrel with the the number and types of car trips that various land uses generate. idea of reducing traffic problems. Progress by traditional traffic The so-called New Urbanists and Neotraditional planners are engineering has seemed elusive; and, although planners are much more ambitious. Among other things, they argue that intensely receptive to new ways of reducing car use, their options higher residential densities, more-open circulation patterns, and are limited. The cost of mass transit is ballooning out of propor- mixed land uses will remedy many traffic problems. tion to expected benefits, and conventional strategies, such as The appeal of such outcomes is hard to deny, but can these HOV lanes and higher parking fees, have not changed most designs deliver? We don’t know. There’s surprisingly little knowl- people’s driving habits. edge about how urban patterns influence travel patterns. Existing The problem, New Urbanists argue, is that these incentive evidence is either mixed, contrary, or difficult to interpret. The strategies ignore the more fundamental facts of how urban devel- potential traffic benefits of New Urbanism reflect an interesting opments are spatially configured. They say the treatments attack set of hypotheses, but they remain a weak basis for current trans- the symptoms, not the disease. Their solution? Higher density, portation policy. mixed land use, and grid-like circulation patterns that will discourage driving, shorten trips, and aggressively encourage URBAN DESIGN AS TRANSPORTATION TOOL walking and transit use. Although deceptively simple in many The proposed urban and suburban developments—alterna- respects, the rationale and method of these proposals have found tively described as either Neotraditional (based on the look and wide acceptance within the planning community. The idea that feel of “traditional” small towns and neighborhoods) or New auto travel will decrease with more-compact land-use has proven Urbanism (essentially Neotraditional plans with a somewhat so appealing that almost all discussions of the new designs report more explicit social agenda)—are easy on the eye and self-con- it as though it were a proven fact. sciously familiar. Their renewed emphasis on front porches, side- These and related ideas are finding their ways into many walks, and common community areas, as well as the half-mile public policy documents aimed at improving air quality, reducing wide “village scale” of many such plans, are perhaps the most traffic congestion, and improving “sense of community.” ➢ Randall Crane is associate professor of urban planning, environmental analysis, and economics at the University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-7075 ([email protected]). A C C E S S 2 Commercial Recent plans for Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego, among others, incorporate Transit Stop New Urbanist motifs. Prominent architect and Neotraditional planning evangelist Andres Office Duany recently claimed, in Consumer Reports, that the transportation benefits of these designs are their most important outcomes. The strong appeal of New Urbanism, then, is that it promises to achieve two very attractive objectives with one stroke—to create improved living environments and to reduce traffic. Unfortunately, research supporting the latter argument is both weak and flawed.