Speaker: Faan Chen, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard-China Project, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University

The rapid growth of cities such as Shanghai in China has presented many transportation, land use and climate change challenges for local government officials, planning and transit practitioners and property developers. These challenges include traffic congestion, energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to global warming. As one of the more visible urban forms of smart growth, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) has been actively promoted as a model for urban development in areas around transit stations to solve such challenges. The vast majority of studies of TOD have been conducted in North American and European cities, while research of TOD is still in its infancy in most developing countries, including China, where residential and transport choices are likely to be more constrained and travel-related attitudes quite different from those in the developed world. Using the data collected from more than 8000 residents living in TOD and non-TOD neighborhoods in the city of Shanghai, this study aims to partly fill the gaps by investigating the causal relationship between the built environment and travel behavior in the Chinese context, and specifically to examine whether altering the built environment can actually lead to meaningful changes in travel behavior, e.g., less Vehicle Kilometers Traveled (VKT) and GHG emissions.

Sponsored by the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy, and Environment, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.