A Tale of Two Cities: Relationships Between Urban Form, Car Ownership and Use and Implications for Public Policy

This paper is concerned with the interrelationships among household incomes, urban development patterns, car ownership, tripmaking and modal choice and with appropriate policy responses to what are still perceived as growing problems associated with rapid increases in car ownership and use. To frame the issues, I use two papers co-authored by Michael Beesley and me that critiqued travel forecasts prepared by the authors of Traffic in Towns for Leeds, and our subsequent assessment of French proposals to build a rail rapid transit system for Teheran. This accounts for the "Tale of Two Cities" reference. The paper also reviews research on car ownership and use by other authors. What is perhaps most interesting about the paper is the enduring nature of these questions. © The London School of Economics and the University of Bath 2001