A spatial analysis of the transportation-land use linkage: Land use pattern and returns from highway investments

Because they correspond with the distribution of population, structures, activities, and natural resources, land use patterns affect public policies. Similarly, public policies shape land use patterns by changing the returns from holding land in alternative uses. Increasingly, researchers are acknowledging the social and environmental externalities generated by private land use decisions and changing land use patterns. Recognizing the extent to which public policies affect private land use decisions is an important component of understanding the behavioral dimension of land use patterns.;This research examines the effects of the transportation network on private land use decisions, empirically testing for evidence of the transportation-land use linkage. Conventional methods used to assess the benefits and costs from transportation investments do not address their secondary effects on private land use decisions, nor do standard transportation engineering and planning models. Instead, these analyses treat land use pattern as an exogenous factor. As a result, predictions of the returns from proposed investments are based on naive forecasts of land use and travel patterns. Without reasonable predictions of land market responses, transportation investments may have unexpected and/or adverse results.;A model of land conversion is developed here to test hypotheses about the transportation-land use linkage and to enable the endogenous treatment of land use pattern when planning for and evaluating transportation investments. The extent to which the consideration of behavioral responses makes a difference in characterizing the return from highway investments is explored by comparing the spatial distributions of predictions of land use and trips made with this approach with those derived using conventional transportation planning methods. This dissertation takes a micro-level perspective and focuses on ex-urban land use change, exploiting parcel level data and geographic information system (GIS) resources and employing spatial econometric techniques to better represent the spatial aspects of the transportation-land use linkage.