How density, diversity, land use and neighborhood type influences bus mobility in the Swedish city of Karlstad: Mixing spatial analytic and typo-morphological approaches to assess the indirect effect of urban form on travel

Abstract

In the research on the effect of urban form on travel, a set of D-variables (density, diversity, design, destination accessibility, etc.) describes land use. Typo-morphology studies the historical emergence and evolution of urban patterns and their elements. In the typo-morphological approach, land use is an underlying element of neighborhood type. Neighborhood type defines urban areas that are relatively similar according to a range of attributes, such as building types, lot sizes, street layouts and land uses. This paper juxtaposes these two approaches to investigate the effect of density and diversity, land use and neighborhood type on bus mobility in the Swedish city of Karlstad. The results show that the number of residents and jobs in standard 400-meter walksheds around bus stops explains a third of the variation in bus ridership, which corresponds to previous studies in Sweden. The scatter plots with neighborhood types indicate that bus patronage variables and the D-variables cluster in intervals. This information about ranges and maximums in bus patronage in different neighborhood types is particularly important for urban designers and planners who work with typologies, form-based codes (FBCs) or transit-oriented development (TOD).