The Transportation Land-Use Link

Abstract

Transportation decisions clearly affect land-use patterns, and land-use decisions clearly affect transportation systems. Urban theorists have addressed the cyclical land-usetransportation relationship for many decades and economists have modeled it extensively. Field studies demonstrate what the economists have predicted and what many theorists have feared: that, in many ways, highways shape urban areas. Yet little of that knowledge has found its way into planning practice, and land-use planning and transportation planning remain separate decision-making processes. Now that Congress has mandated that transportation planners consider both land-use plans and the land-use impacts of their decisions, the literature of planning practice should draw on the theoretical and research literature and provide guidance to planners on how to manage the transportation-land-use cycle.