Effective Transit Requires Walkable Communities: Land Use Lessons of Transport Patterns in Four World Cities

A comparison of transportation systems in the metropolitan areas of the world’s financial capitals—London, Paris, New York, and Tokyo—found that although all of the urban areas are spreading outward from their historical and economic cores, there are striking differences in their patterns of development—and the transport consequences. The principal determinant of travel demand and mode in the four cities is the extent to which housing and employment are clustered around transit. It appears that the more that daily trip needs can be met by walking, the more likely that longer trips will be made by transit than by automobile. This conclusion is drawn from the high transit use and low automobile use in the inner zones of New York, where there is the largest number of rapid-transit stations of all four cities. It is reinforced by comparisons of outer zones of New York and Tokyo with similar total population density but strikingly different configurations of settlement and greatly contrasting travel patterns. Extensive supporting data are reported. The land use configurations of each region are as much the product of institutional and economic forces as of each city’s geography, history, and culture. London, the urban area most similar to the New York region in size and culture, is responding to aggressive national policies that mandate land use plans to promote town centers and reduce travel demand. Long-range planning processes in Tokyo and Paris have achieved transit-oriented development even in their outer zones. In contrast, hundreds of municipalities in the 31 -county New York metropolitan area make reactive land use decisions influenced by incentives to sprawl inherent in the U.S. economy. Measures to offset these forces are recommended.