The Impact of Land Use Patterns on Mobility Structures

Abstract

In the context of the discussion about sustainable cities in the last few years, the idea of a concentrated decentralisation -which means putting more emphasis on developing central places of medium order- has been fairly often debated as a possible solution for regions within the catchment area of greater conurbations (BfLR 1996, Empirica 1996). It is expected that the realisation of this settlement structure concept will reduce the need for motorised traffic and therefore minimise the use of energy. Until now there is little empirical evidence of the role which settlement structures play within the context of transport efficiency. Most of the time it is argued that it is common sense that a neighbourhood with different functions automatically induces functional interactions between the various areas. In this chapter I would like to discuss the question: what share of transport can be attributed to settlement structures? Southern Bavaria has been chosen as the area for a case study, a region characterised by its interactions with the city of Munich.