Commuting behaviour and urban form: a longitudinal study of a polycentric urban region in Denmark

Abstract

This paper is an empirical investigation of the relation between urban form and commuting behaviour in a polycentric urban region. It explores to what extent urban form and location variables help to explain commuting time, distance and mode based on an empirical case, East Jutland, which is a polycentric urban region in Denmark. Data from the National Transport Survey of Denmark were used for this quantitative analysis and two time periods were selected to highlight any potential changes over time. Empirical findings indicate that urban form and location variables help to explain the three selected aspects of commuting. However, urban form variables have greater explanatory power in explaining commuting modes than commuting time and commuting distance. No general trends in commuting were detectable from the data. Finally, the empirical findings revealed specificities of the case study. For instance, two of the important findings are that the distance to the closest urban centre is an important factor which affects the three selected aspects of commuting, while the distance from the residence to the closest large city (i.e. second-ranked city) is associated with a relatively short commuting distance in East Jutland.

Keywords:

• urban region
• Denmark
• commuting time
• commuting distance
• commuting mode
• location variables

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