Reducing Rural Car Ownership: Cultural Not Policy Changes?

Author(s):  
Emma L. Rearick ◽  
Gregory L. Newmark

Automobile use is recognized as affecting public health, environmental sustainability, land use, and household expense. Car use is closely tied to car ownership rates. Most car ownership research focuses on urban areas; however, 97% of the United States’ land area and a fifth of its population remains rural. Factors that affect car ownership in these communities may be different than in more urbanized areas. This research focuses on the 2,285 counties in the continental United States that are defined as entirely rural by the guidelines established in the Agricultural Act of 2014. These counties were grouped by five multi-state regions using U.S. Census Bureau definitions. Their percentage changes in car ownership, as well as other demographic variables, over a quarter century were calculated using data from the 1990 Decennial Census and the 2014 5-Year American Community Survey. A multiple regression model was estimated for each grouping to identify counties with lower-than-expected changes in car ownership. For each grouping, one of these outlying counties was selected and matched with another county whose changes in car ownership were within expected ranges given demographic developments. Local professionals were then interviewed to identify policies possibly responsible for the difference in car ownership trends between the matched-pair counties. The interviews suggested that, contrary to expectation, transportation policies had no discernable effect on rural car ownership, but land use polices and, more often, cultural factors linked to changing populations were associated with reduced rural car ownership.

Author(s):  
Marlon Boarnet ◽  
Randall C. Crane

The facts, figures, and inferences in chapter 7 regarding municipal behavior toward transit-oriented housing opportunities illustrate many points. Still, there is much that even a careful statistical analysis might miss or misunderstand. For that reason, we also explored what we could learn by talking to real planners about these issues. The case of San Diego is interesting and useful for several reasons. First, the San Diego Trolley is the oldest of the current generation of light rail projects in the United States. Unlike many newer systems, the age of San Diego’s rail transit (the South Line opened in 1981) allows time for land use planning to respond to the fixed investment. Second, the San Diego system is no stranger to modern transit-based planning ideas. The San Diego City Council approved a land-use plan for their stations that includes many of the ideas promoted by transit-oriented development (TOD) advocates (City of San Diego, 1992). Third, the light rail transit (LRT) authority in San Diego County, the Metropolitan Transit Development Board (MTDB), is often regarded as one of the more successful municipal LRT agencies. The initial parts of the MTDB rail transit system were constructed strictly with state and local funds, using readily available, relatively low-cost technology (Demoro and Harder, 1989, p. 6). Portions of San Diego’s system have high fare-box recovery rates, including the South Line, which in its early years recovered as much as 90 percent of operating costs at the fare box (Gómez-Ibáñez, 1985). All of these factors make San Diego potentially a “best-case” example of TOD implementation. When generalizing from this case study, it is important to remember that the transit station area development process in San Diego is likely better developed than in many other urban areas in the United States. The results from San Diego County can illustrate general issues that, if they have not already been encountered, might soon become important in other urban areas with rail transit systems. Also, given San Diego County’s longer history of both LRT and TOD when compared with most other regions, any barriers identified in San Diego County might be even more important elsewhere.


2009 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamalunlaili Abdullah ◽  
Mohd. Zulhafidz Yahaya ◽  
Mohd Zuwairi Yunus ◽  
Mohd Shakir Md Ali Safudin

Urban sprawl is a one of the most pressing issues confronting urban development in the developed as well as developing countries. Much research had been done on the trend of urban sprawl and its negative consequences in established cities in the United States, Europe and Australia. This paper analyzes the phenomenon in the three largest metropolitan areas in Malaysia, namely Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor Bharu Metropolitan Areas. Using population and land use as main variables, it argues that suburban expansion and the resulting urban sprawl has been occurring in these metropolitan areas since 1970 and has intensified since the late 1980s due to the rapid economic growth brought by industrialization. It calls for more sustainable approach in the planning and management of urban areas in Malaysia.


2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamalunlaili Abdullah ◽  
Mohd. Zulhafidz Yahaya ◽  
Mohd Zuwairi Yunus ◽  
Mohd Shakir Md Ali Safudin

Urban sprawl is a one of the most pressing issues confronting urban development in the developed as well as developing countries. Much research had been done on the trend of urban sprawl and its negative consequences in established cities in the United States, Europe and Australia. This paper analyzes the phenomenon in the three largest metropolitan areas in Malaysia, namely Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor Bharu Metropolitan Areas. Using population and land use as main variables, it argues that suburban expansion and the resulting urban sprawl has been occurring in these metropolitan areas since 1970 and has intensified since the late 1980s due to the rapid economic growth brought by industrialization. It calls for more sustainable approach in the planning and management of urban areas in Malaysia.


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (42) ◽  
pp. E9773-E9781 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor C. Stokes ◽  
Karen C. Seto

Increasing job accessibility is considered key to urban sustainability progress, both from an environmental and from a social perspective. However, sustainability outcomes depend on the processes contributing to accessibility trends, not just the trends themselves. Here, we ask whether sustainability benefits have followed from accessibility trends in the United States. We measure changes in accessibility from 2002 to 2014 across 909 US urban areas and decompose these changes to understand underlying infrastructure and land use processes. Our results show that job accessibility has increased across 74% of urban areas for the average resident, using both cars and transit. However, most of these accessibility gains were not achieved in ways that are inherently beneficial to environmental or social sustainability. In some urban areas, accessibility increases were conducive to reducing emissions, while in others, accessibility increases were conducive to reducing social inequities. However, accessibility increases almost never created a simultaneous social and environmental “win–win,” as is often assumed. Our findings highlight how the spatial patterns of urbanization create tradeoffs between different facets of sustainability. Identifying where social objectives take precedence over environmental objectives (or vice versa) could help determine how accessibility increases can be accomplished to contribute to a more sustainable urban future.


1995 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
BA White ◽  
DJ Caplan ◽  
JA Weintraub

NASPA Journal ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary H. Knock

In the introduction of this book, Arthur Cohen states that The Shaping of American Higher Education is less a history than a synthesis. While accurate, this depiction in no way detracts from the value of the book. This work synthesizes the first three centuries of development of high-er education in the United States. A number of books detail the early history of the American collegiate system; however, this book also pro-vides an up-to-date account of developments and context for under-standing the transformation of American higher education in the last quarter century. A broad understanding of the book’s subtitle, Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System, is truly realized by the reader.


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
John R Phillips

The cover photograph for this issue of Public Voices was taken sometime in the summer of 1929 (probably June) somewhere in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Very probably the photo was taken in Indianola but, perhaps, it was Ruleville. It is one of three such photos, one of which does have the annotation on the reverse “Ruleville Midwives Club 1929.” The young woman wearing a tie in this and in one of the other photos was Ann Reid Brown, R.N., then a single woman having only arrived in the United States from Scotland a few years before, in 1923. Full disclosure: This commentary on the photo combines professional research interests in public administration and public policy with personal interests—family interests—for that young nurse later married and became the author’s mother. From the scholarly perspective, such photographs have been seen as “instrumental in establishing midwives’ credentials and cultural identity at a key transitional moment in the history of the midwife and of public health” (Keith, Brennan, & Reynolds 2012). There is also deep irony if we see these photographs as being a fragment of the American dream, of a recent immigrant’s hope for and success at achieving that dream; but that fragment of the vision is understood quite differently when we see that she began a hopeful career working with a Black population forcibly segregated by law under the incongruously named “separate but equal” legal doctrine. That doctrine, derived from the United States Supreme Court’s 1896 decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, would remain the foundation for legally enforced segregation throughout the South for another quarter century. The options open to the young, white, immigrant nurse were almost entirely closed off for the population with which she then worked. The remaining parts of this overview are meant to provide the following: (1) some biographical information on the nurse; (2) a description, in so far as we know it, of why she was in Mississippi; and (3) some indication of areas for future research on this and related topics.


Author(s):  
Peter Scott

From an international perspective, the inter-war car industry was a British success story. Britain ranked only second to the United States as the world’s leading producer of, and market for, automobiles, owing to a relatively strong domestic market by European standards. However, while consumers’ expenditure was high, it was not deep—car ownership per capita in 1938 being around a third of US levels. This chapter examines why the British automobile sector failed to take off into mass market diffusion. A number of important factors are highlighted, including lower British wages relative to the United States; punitive vehicle and petrol taxation; and the high unit production costs incurred in serving a market too small to justify Fordist mass production. However, a more fundamental reason was the low priority given to car ownership in a relatively small, densely populated, and highly urbanized island nation with well-developed public transport networks.


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