Air pollution is an increasing concern to urban residents. In response, residents are beginning to adapt their travel behaviour and to consider air quality when choosing a home. We study implications of such behaviour for the morphology of cities and population exposure to traffic-induced air pollution. To do so, we propose a spatially explicit and integrated residential location and transport mode choice model for a city with traffic-induced air pollution. Intra-urban spatial patterns of population density, transport mode choice, and population exposure are simulated for urban settings of varying health concerns and air pollution information available among the population. Numerical analysis suggests that increased availability of information on spatially variable traffic-induced health concerns shifts population towards suburban areas with availability of public transport. Thus, health benefits result from reduced population densities close to urban centres in this context. Our work calls for integrated land use and transport measures, which are spatially differentiated, to mitigate population exposure.
Related publication
Schindler, M., Wang, J.Y. and Connors, R.D. (2021). A two-stage residential location and transport mode choice model with exposure to traffic-induced air pollution. Journal of Transport Geography, 93. DOI 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2021.103044.