Measuring the Impact of Travel Behavior in an Urban Form on Location Affordability in Rawalpindi-Islamabad, Pakistan

抄録

Housing and transportation studies have continuously supported the theory of location affordability (LA). Residents living in proximity to transit and other facilities spent less income share on transportation costs, offsetting higher housing costs. However, the broader thesis argues that urban form measures and travel patterns could also determine LA, demanding empirical exploration in the Southern hemisphere. This study in the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Metropolitan Area (RIMA) addresses the impact of travel patterns to service facilities on the combined housing and transportation (H+T) costs using 435 valid samples acquired by a door-to-door questionnaire survey. The approach included; 1) Three-box plot analyses for housing costs, transportation costs, and the H+T costs, 2) Cross-tabulation and Chi-square test of travel patterns, and 3) Multivariate regression analysis. The multivariate regression demonstrated that the household characteristics significantly impacted H+T costs, and when moving away from the city-core, the average H+T cost increased substantially. Additionally, frequent public transportation (PT) usage and walking to the utility stores were positively associated with H+T costs compared to the travel time to reach PT and education facilities. The findings suggest that policymakers consider affordable locations with high proximity to service facilities when establishing affordable housing schemes.