Why live far? — Insights from modeling residential location choice in Bangladesh

Increasing commute distances often lead to increased auto-dependency and is a major problem in many developed as well as developing countries. While in developed countries, the propensity to commute long distances generally originates from the preference to work in the core of the city and live in the suburb or periphery, in developing countries, the trend is often quite the opposite. For example, in Bangladesh, people generally have a strong preference to live at the heart of the major cities even if they work at the peripheral areas of the city, in another city or in a rural area. Further, it is also not uncommon to maintain split-families where the earning member of the family lives near the workplace while the rest of the family is based in a big city (subject to affordability). These phenomena lead to substantial increase in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and add burden to the transport infrastructure.