Six French urban areas which present strongly contrasted spatial structures were compared. The hypothesis is that those spatial differences determine differences in terms of commuting. The data come from the 1975 and the 1999 Census of the population made by the INSEE (French National Institute for Statistics). Three of the urban areas present a strong city centre where more than 50% of the inhabitants and 50% of the employment are still located. The three others are characterized by the majority of people and employment being located in the suburbs. It is shown that in centralized urban areas the majority of travels are made inside the city centre whereas in the urban areas where suburbanization is important the weight of travels inside the suburbs and also the exchanges between the centre and the suburbs are largely more important. Indeed, the correspondence between the location of residential sites and the location of jobs is significantly worse in the most suburbanized areas because there exists a strong concurrence between the centre and the suburbs for housing and employment and because people who live in the suburbs are seldom located in the municipality where they work. Urban sprawl produces then a growing dissociation between housing and jobs and a consequent growth of travel between suburban municipalities and also between the city centre and the suburbs. This evolution favours the use of car: indeed 80% of journeys between two different municipalities are made by car though modal choice involves more often walking and public transport when journeys are made inside the same municipality (the city centre as well as a suburban municipality). For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
Abstract