Beyond single destination access: a tour based analysis of proximity based planning in Melbourne

Proximity based planning has become an influential idea in urban policy, centred on the goal of meeting daily needs within short walking and cycling distances of home. However, most studies still assess access to single destinations, even though daily travel often involves linked tours rather than isolated trips. This paper develops a tour based perspective on proximity based planning and examines how daily activity patterns differ across Greater Melbourne. Using data from the Melbourne travel survey, we construct home based tours from full day travel diaries, classify them by destination structure, and estimate separate latent class models for weekdays and weekends. The results show that outer Melbourne is much more car dependent than inner Melbourne, while the overall structure of weekday and weekend tour patterns is more similar across the city. Car dominated tours increase from 49.5% in the inner ring to 79.9% in the outer ring, while walk dominated tours fall from 27.4% to 12.2%. The latent class analysis shows that similar weekday and weekend tour archetypes are found across inner, middle, and outer Melbourne, but are realised through different modes. Within the same classes, walking and public transport are more common in the inner ring, while car use is highest in the outer ring. These findings suggest that proximity based planning should not be assessed only by whether destinations are nearby, but by whether neighbourhoods allow people to combine daily activities without needing a car.