Relationships between Urban Density, Travel, and Business Productivity in the European Countries: Empirical Evidence and its Policy Implications for Spatial Planning and Design
Le résumé fourni par la source
This paper describes how recent academic and policy studies in many developed countries have in various ways indicated that there is an enormous challenge in reducing the carbon emissions that arise from transport and the wider built environment. Meeting the national level carbon budget in most cases requires a step change relative to the slow progress in recent years. Such a step change would require significant investment. In turn, the investment required ultimately has to be funded through improved productivity. It makes sense in policy research to examine how transport and land use planning measures impact upon business productivity and to seek innovative design solutions that can raise business productivity while reducing carbon emissions and other environmental impacts. The theoretical insights into the effects of business agglomeration upon productivity can be traced back to the beginning of neoclassical economics in the late 19th Century. However, practical analysis of such effects for policy purposes has only become possible very recently, because of the theoretical advancements made since the late 1970s in New Economic Geography, and the growing volume of empirical work in this field over the last 10 years. The paper reports new research findings from a United Kingdom (UK) EPSRC Energy Efficient Cities project that examines the relationships between business productivity, travel patterns, and urban activity density in the European countries. Urban activity density is a short hand for densities of business activities (defined by different classes of outputs and jobs), of residential activities (defined by different classes of households and individuals), and of ancillary land uses.
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