The relationship between urban form and travel behaviour: a comparison between results from a macro and micro analysis in the Tyne and Wear metropolitan conurbation

Recent literature has documented the changing nature of the role of integrated land-use and transport models when used to inform local authorities in making decisions. One common argument is that the integrated model is inadequately equipped to address the widening range of transportation goals including promoting environmental preservation, reducing social inequities and improving quality of life. Furthermore, such models are often said to put too much emphasis on targeting the requirements of policies for regional economic growth. The paper offered here looks in detail at output from two different studies with the same research question and using the same case study area in Tyne and Wear, North East England. The overarching research question was to what extent urban form can be shaped to meet targets for a future sustainable urban environment. The comparison shows that both studies suggest that while spatial strategy and urban form characteristics do have a role in changing travel behaviour, the extent of revealed changes are generally limited. However, whilst the macro study provides no further understanding of the drivers of the change in travel behaviour, the micro study demonstrated that when considering different urban forms it is the attitudes of citizens rather than the spatial design itself that plays the bigger role in influencing the patterns of car travel. Thus, suggesting that future policies that work on attitudes may have a bigger impact in changing travel behaviour. This is currently not adequately captured by macro level models and points to a need for more research into how to better model travel behaviour in a regional modelling framework. Thus the overarching objective of this paper is to gain a clearer understanding of the strategic relationship between these two approaches to better inform policy-relevant work on designing settlement patterns to support sustainable travel for low carbon pathways.