Coevolution of Network and Land Use

Abstract

As American cities evolved in the first half of the 20th century, we saw a concentration of activities and development at the centers of cities. Since freeways were constructed from the 1960s, roads also became more differentiated with regard to their design speeds and capacities (certainly in the pre-auto era most unpaved streets were equally slow, with paved streets and highways and then freeways, some roads got much faster and carry more traffic). Faster roads have enabled decentralization of activities, and consequently led to a flattening of the density gradient of land use as centers of cities became relatively less important. In response to this trend, the representation of urban spatial structure in urban economics has migrated from the mono-centric models to the poly-centric models (Mori, 2006).