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Measuring Community Completeness: Jobs—Housing Balance, Accessibility, and Convenient Local Access to Nonwork Destinations

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  • Louis A Merlin

    (Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3140, USA)

Abstract

Using 2007 travel-diary data from metropolitan Chicago, I investigate what aspects of urban form contribute most to community completeness, as defined by internal tour capture for nonwork tours. I examine two distinct geographic scales: census-defined ‘places’, and synthetically constructed ‘centered communities’. Centered communities are defined as nonwork travel sheds centered upon well-defined concentrations of activity. Higher accessibility share (a new urban form measure defined in the paper) and higher mixed use both significantly predict greater community completeness, as do higher levels of residential or employment density. Furthermore, I find that mixed-use measures describe something other than simple proximity to job-based attractions; these measures also address the appropriate balance of activities necessary for a complete community. To build more-complete communities, planners need to ensure that local accessibility to a variety of destinations of interest is high relative to the regional accessibility to these same types of destinations outside the community.

Suggested Citation

  • Louis A Merlin, 2014. "Measuring Community Completeness: Jobs—Housing Balance, Accessibility, and Convenient Local Access to Nonwork Destinations," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 41(4), pages 736-756, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:41:y:2014:i:4:p:736-756
    DOI: 10.1068/b120010p
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Longxu Yan & De Wang & Shangwu Zhang & Dongcan Xie, 2019. "Evaluating the multi-scale patterns of jobs-residence balance and commuting time–cost using cellular signaling data: a case study in Shanghai," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 777-792, June.

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