School commuting: the relationship between energy consumption and urban form

Abstract

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues.Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. a b s t r a c tA large amount of research in the past has focused on the relationships between the energy consumption for home-to-work travel and land-use patterns. However, little is known about children's mobility. This paper analyses the energy consumption, travel distances and mode choices for school commuting based on two decennial surveys in Belgium. The results highlight the following: (1) mobility behaviours have evolved drastically over the past decades for school commuting, an evolution that cannot be entirely related to land-use variables, (2) the energy consumption for school commuting is strongly dependent upon the school level, and (3) the links between land-use patterns and energy consumption for school commuting are different than those highlighted within the literature between urban forms and hometo-work commutes. The concentration of secondary schools and tertiary institutions in urban centres induces higher energy consumption rates, whereas the decentralisation of nursery and primary schools across the entire territory leads to very low local energy consumption and increased walking and cycling. These results provide a better understanding of school commuting within the European context and could guide future policies focused on transport energy consumption at the local scale.

A simplified framework to assess the feasibility of zero-energy at the neighbourhood/community scale

“…They also highlighted that the energy load of a building is affected by its orientation and shape. The impact of urban form on transportation energy consumption has also be widely highlighted in the literature, but it is considered either alone [e.g., [32][33][34][35][36] or, in a few studies, in comparison with building energy consumption [e.g., [37][38][39].…”

An online interactive tool to assess energy consumption in residential buildings and for daily mobility

“…The complete method and data set were presented in detail in two previous papers addressing the investigation of the relationships between the urban form the location of the activities in the territory and the transportation energy consumption for home-to-work and home-to-school travels [33,34].…”

Forma urbana y Huella Ecológica en el Área Metropolitana de Concepción (Chile)

“…Otra posible estrategia consistiría en la adopción de medidas que permitieran reducir la huella per cápita a escala de individuo/ciudad/región/país, convergiendo hacia unos niveles compatibles con el capital natural existente a escala planetaria. En este contexto las políticas de compacidad podrían resultar exitosas, ya que en diversos estudios se constata la existencia de una correlación negativa entre densidad y huella per cápita (Moles, Foley, Morrissey & O'Regan, 2008;Moos, Whitfield, Johnson & Andrey, 2006;Muñiz & Galindo, 2005;Muñiz et al, 2013;O'Reagan, Morrissey, Foley & Moles, 2009;Rees & Wackernagel, 1996;Ryu, 2005;Walker, 2013), si bien es cierto que algunos han obtenido evidencia empírica que apunta en la dirección contraria (Australian Conservation Foundation, 2007;Marique, Dujardin, Teller & Reiter, 2013).…”