Chapter 5: The Transportation-Land Use Policy Connection

The discovery of the transportation-land use connection is not new. As Cervero (1991) notes, little has changed since the 1954 publication of Urban Traffic: A Function of Land Use (Mitchell and Rapkin 1954). But the discovery certainly is older than that. The Robber Barons of the 19^th Century, for example, probably had some sense of the relationship when they accepted land as payment for constructing the transcontinental railroad. So, most likely, did the Dutch when they purchased Manhattan Island from Native Americans for 24 dollars. In more recent times, recognition of the transportation-land use connection rose following the completion of the interstate highway system and the rise of urban sprawl. And as public interest in growth management revived following the 1980 recession, a consensus grew that it was impossible to pave our way out of congestion. As a result, the transportation-land use connection became a central theme of the movement that became known as Smart Growth. At approximately the same time, transportation planning models—long based on a four-step model that accepted land use as a given—began to incorporate feedbacks from transportation to land use. LUTRAC, the pioneering effort in Portland, Oregon, to defeat the construction of a circumferential highway is perhaps the seminal application of such models.