From Mobility to Accessibility: Transforming Urban Transportation and Land-Use Planning
Jonathan Levine, Joe Grengs, and Louis A. Merlin
Abstract
This book flips the tables on the standard models for evaluating regional transportation performance. It argues for an “accessibility shift” whereby transportation planning, and the transportation dimensions of land-use planning, would be based on people's ability to reach destinations, rather than on their ability to travel fast. Existing models for planning and evaluating transportation, which have taken vehicle speeds as the most important measure, would make sense if movement were the purpose of transportation. But it is the ability to reach destinations, not movement per se, that people s ... More
This book flips the tables on the standard models for evaluating regional transportation performance. It argues for an “accessibility shift” whereby transportation planning, and the transportation dimensions of land-use planning, would be based on people's ability to reach destinations, rather than on their ability to travel fast. Existing models for planning and evaluating transportation, which have taken vehicle speeds as the most important measure, would make sense if movement were the purpose of transportation. But it is the ability to reach destinations, not movement per se, that people seek from their transportation systems. While the concept of accessibility has been around for the better part of a century, the book shows that the accessibility shift is compelled by the fundamental purpose of transportation. It argues that the shift would be transformative to the practice of both transportation and land-use planning but is impeded by many conceptual obstacles regarding the nature of accessibility and its potential for guiding development of the built environment. By redefining success in transportation, the book provides city planners, decision makers, and scholars a path to reforming the practice of transportation and land-use planning in modern cities and metropolitan areas.
Keywords:
regional transportation,
transportation planning,
land-use planning,
accessibility,
cities,
metropolitan areas
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2019 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781501716072 |
| Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: May 2020 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9781501716072.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Jonathan Levine, author
University of Michigan
Joe Grengs, author
University of Michigan
Louis A. Merlin, author
Florida Atlantic University
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