Commute distance and jobs-housing fit

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the affordable housing crisis is forcing households to seek lower cost housing in the outer reaches of major metropolitan areas, helping to explain recent increases in commute distance. To test this relationship, we use spatial regression to examine the relationship between the availability of affordable housing in close proximity to jobs (jobs-housing fit) and commute distance in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The analysis draws on 2015 Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Origin–Destination Employment Statistics (LODES) by workplace supplemented with data from the 2013–2017 5-Year American Community Survey on affordable housing units. We find substantial variation in jobs-housing fit across Los Angeles neighborhoods. The imbalance is greatest in higher-income neighborhoods located along the coast and in Orange County, south of Los Angeles. Controlling for other determinants of commute distance, a higher ratio of jobs to affordable housing is associated with longer distance commutes. To address growing commute distances, policymakers must greatly expand and protect the supply of long-term rental housing particularly in job-rich neighborhoods.

Mobility Resilience of Commute Trips During the Covid-19 Pandemic in Seoul, Korea

“…Based on theories about job-house relationship and commute behaviour (Blumenberg & Siddiq 2022), we assume that the Resilience index is a function of three types of characteristicslocation, employment, and housing. The models take the following basic form: 𝑅𝐸𝑆 = 𝑓(𝐸, 𝐻, 𝐿) Where: E denotes a vector of employment characteristics (percentage of employees in different industries in the tract, density of other potential destinations like university) H denotes a vector of housing characteristics (percentage of female residents and foreigners, car ownership level and total Residence Density) L denotes a vector of locational characteristics (travel time to a destination, difference between the eigenvector centrality of the destination and the origin for an OD pair, the density of public transit facilities including the buses and subways).…”

Identify social and job disparities in the relationship between job‐housing balance and urban commuting using Baidu trajectory big data

“…Traditional spatial mismatch theory emphasizes the impact of residential segregation and housing affordability on the job‐housing relationship, where imbalances can lead to extended commutes, contributing to urban issues like traffic congestion and rising unemployment rates. Consequently, considerable efforts have been made toward establishing job‐housing balance and self‐contained communities in modern urban planning (Blumenberg & Siddiq, 2023; Chai, 2014; Wang et al., 2011).…”

Unraveling Incommensurate Spatial Partitions: A Bipartite Graph Approach to School-Neighborhood Interactions and Their Impacts

“…The case of schools and neighborhoods is but one example of the problem of incommensurate spatial partitions (ISP). Other examples include the spatial mismatch between housing markets and employment centers (Blumenberg & Siddiq, 2023), voting districts and neighborhoods (Kenny et al, 2023), ecological zones and regional economies (Anselin et al, 1990), as well as others.…”