The Built Environment as a Determinant of Walking Behavior: Analyzing Non-Work Pedestrian Travel in Portland, Oregon

Much has been written about the connection between land use/urban form and transportation from the perspective of impacting automobile trip generation. This only addresses half the issue. The theoretical advances in land use/transportation relationships embodied in paradigms such as the jobs housing balance, neo-traditional design (NTD) standards and transit oriented development (TOD) rely very heavily on the generation of pedestrian traffic in order to realize their proposed benefits. The analysis presented here employs similar models and data sets used in Boarnet & Greenwald for the Portland, Oregon area, but applies them towards analysis of non-work walking travel. The results suggest that whatever effects land use has on affecting individual non-work walking trip generation, the impacts take place at the neighborhood level