IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/uctcwp/qt353631r6.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Generalizing Density Functions Better Explain Urban Commuting? Some Evidence from the Los Angeles Region

Author

Listed:
  • Song, Shunfeng

Abstract

The assumption that urban workers economize on commuting is implicit in urban economic theory. Yet it has been challenged by some recent studies. This paper estimates commute flows implied by three urban density functions: monocentric, polycentric, and dispersive. It finds that an urban density function better predicting the actual spatial patterns also better explains the actual commuting behavior. This finding helps us to preserve the assumption that urban workers make attempts to economize on commuting in their location choices.

Suggested Citation

  • Song, Shunfeng, 1994. "Does Generalizing Density Functions Better Explain Urban Commuting? Some Evidence from the Los Angeles Region," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt353631r6, University of California Transportation Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:uctcwp:qt353631r6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/353631r6.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Suh, Seoung Hwan, 1990. "Wasteful commuting: An alternative approach," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 277-286, November.
    2. Small, Kenneth A & Song, Shunfeng, 1992. ""Wasteful" Commuting: A Resolution," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(4), pages 888-898, August.
    3. Vuong, Quang H, 1989. "Likelihood Ratio Tests for Model Selection and Non-nested Hypotheses," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 307-333, March.
    4. Giuliano, Genevieve & Small, Kenneth A., 1991. "Subcenters in the Los Angeles region," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 163-182, July.
    5. Shunfeng Song, 1994. "Modelling Worker Residence Distribution in the Los Angeles Region," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 31(9), pages 1533-1544, November.
    6. Small Kenneth A. & Song Shunfeng, 1994. "Population and Employment Densities: Structure and Change," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 292-313, November.
    7. E Heikkila & P Gordon & J I Kim & R B Peiser & H W Richardson & D Dale-Johnson, 1989. "What Happened to the CBD-Distance Gradient?: Land Values in a Policentric City," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 21(2), pages 221-232, February.
    8. P Gordon & H W Richardson & H L Wong, 1986. "The Distribution of Population and Employment in a Polycentric City: The Case of Los Angeles," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 18(2), pages 161-173, February.
    9. White, M.J., 1988. "Urban Commuting Journeys Are Not Wasteful," Papers 88-10, Michigan - Center for Research on Economic & Social Theory.
    10. McDonald, John F. & Bowman, H. Woods, 1976. "Some tests of alternative urban population density functions," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 242-252, July.
    11. White, Michelle J, 1988. "Urban Commuting Journeys Are Not "Wasteful."," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(5), pages 1097-1110, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vincent Viguié, 2015. "Cross-commuting and housing prices in a polycentric modeling of cities," Policy Papers 2015.03, FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
    2. Zhuo Chen & Seong-Hoon Cho & Neelam Poudyal & Roland K. Roberts, 2009. "Forecasting Housing Prices under Different Market Segmentation Assumptions," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(1), pages 167-187, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alex Anas & Richard Arnott & Kenneth A. Small, 1998. "Urban Spatial Structure," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 1426-1464, September.
    2. Chunil Kim & Choongik Choi, 2019. "Towards Sustainable Urban Spatial Structure: Does Decentralization Reduce Commuting Times?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-28, February.
    3. Shunfeng Song, 1994. "Modelling Worker Residence Distribution in the Los Angeles Region," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 31(9), pages 1533-1544, November.
    4. Ottensmann, John R. & Payton, Seth & Man, Joyce, 2008. "Urban Location and Housing Prices within a Hedonic Model," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 38(1), pages 1-17.
    5. David Merriman & Toru Ohkawara & Tsutomu Suzuki, 1995. "Excess Commuting in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area: Measurement and Policy Simulations," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 32(1), pages 69-85, February.
    6. Plaut, Pnina Ohanna & Plaut, Steven E., 1998. "Endogenous Identification of Multiple Housing Price Centers in Metropolitan Areas," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 193-217, September.
    7. McMillen, Daniel P. & Smith, Stefani C., 2003. "The number of subcenters in large urban areas," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 321-338, May.
    8. McMillen, Daniel P., 2001. "Nonparametric Employment Subcenter Identification," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 448-473, November.
    9. Shu‐Hen Chiang, 2012. "The Source of Metropolitan Growth: The Role of Commuting," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 143-166, March.
    10. Myung-Jin Jun & Simon Choi & Frank Wen & Ki-Hyun Kwon, 2018. "Effects of urban spatial structure on level of excess commutes: A comparison between Seoul and Los Angeles," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(1), pages 195-211, January.
    11. GUILLAIN, Rachel & LE GALLO, Julie & BOITEUX-ORAIN, Céline, 2004. "The evolution of the spatial and sectoral patterns in Ile-De-France over 1978-1997," LEG - Document de travail - Economie 2004-02, LEG, Laboratoire d'Economie et de Gestion, CNRS, Université de Bourgogne.
    12. Genevieve Giuliano & Kenneth A. Small, 1993. "Is the Journey to Work Explained by Urban Structure?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 30(9), pages 1485-1500, November.
    13. Miguel Angel Garcia Lopez & Ivan Muñiz Olivera, 2005. "Employment descentralisation: polycentric compaction or sprawl? The case of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region 1986-1996," Working Papers wpdea0511, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
    14. Lambert van der Laan, 1998. "Commuting in multinodal urban systems: An empirical comparison of three alternative models," ERSA conference papers ersa98p252, European Regional Science Association.
    15. Bumsoo Lee, 2006. "'Edge' or 'Edgeless Cities'? Urban Spatial Structure in US Metropolitan Areas, 1980 to 2000," Working Paper 8574, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    16. McMillen, Daniel P. & McDonald, John F., 1998. "Suburban Subcenters and Employment Density in Metropolitan Chicago," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 157-180, March.
    17. McMillen, Daniel P. & William Lester, T., 2003. "Evolving subcenters: employment and population densities in Chicago, 1970-2020," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 60-81, March.
    18. Zhou, Jiangping & Murphy, Enda, 2019. "Day-to-day variation in excess commuting: An exploratory study of Brisbane, Australia," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 223-232.
    19. Miguel Ángel García & Ivan Muñiz, 2005. "Descentralización del empleo: ¿compactación policéntrica o dispersión? El caso de la región metropolitana de Barcelona 1986-1996," Working Papers wpdea0506, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
    20. Alpkokin, Pelin & Cheung, Charles & Black, John & Hayashi, Yoshitsugu, 2008. "Dynamics of clustered employment growth and its impacts on commuting patterns in rapidly developing cities," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 427-444, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social and Behavioral Sciences;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:uctcwp:qt353631r6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/itucbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.