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There is evidence that those aged younger than 35 within Europe are gaining their driver's licences at a later age and are less likely to own or use a car regularly than the generations preceding them. Accordingly, these individuals make greater use of public transportation, active travel and newer modes of mobility such as micro-mobility hire (Chatterjee et al., 2018).
In principle, if these trends continue as these individuals age there could be a wide range of benefits for society including improved air quality, reduced carbon emissions and improved health. However, there is significant debate over the factors which underpin this trend and how these might be addressed by planners to best support the creation of sustainable, equitable and inclusive urban areas.
A greater understanding of these trends and implications for planning is therefore necessary. It may be the by-product of the locational preferences of young people for high-density living within urban areas with a high concentration of social, cultural, and economic opportunities in ‘complete neighbourhoods’ (De Vos and Alemi, 2020). However, it may be associated with cultural and attitude-based shifts in younger generations e.g. greater environmental consciousness (Chatterjee et al., 2018), affordability or related to delays in ‘life-course events’ such as having children (Clark et al., 2016).
A greater understanding of these trends and the implications for planning is therefore necessary to support equitable changes which support sustainable and well-functioning urban areas, including identifying tensions and challenges in doing so (Solá et al., 2018)
To address this gap, the research utilises a mixed-methods approach using secondary data to examine attitudes, modal choice and car use amongst this age group. It will also use data relating to transport availability and other physical factors e.g. density in the case study area of the North-West of England.
This is complemented by a series of semi-structured interviews with individuals aged between 18 – 35 living in the case study area. The interviews explore transportation decision-making amongst this group, with a particular focus upon affordability pressures, inequalities in access and how the availability of sustainable transportation affects modal choice.
The research will make use of Social Practice Theory as a theoretical framework. It will provide a means to identify how materials (i.e. infrastructure and locational factors) combine with meanings (i.e. attitudes) and competencies (i.e. abilities to cycle or drive) to shape behaviours and decision-making (Shove et al., 2012). This will be used to code the qualitative data and will also enable the factors involved in the quantitative analysis to be integrated coherently, in a mixed-method approach.
This research is currently underway, with the preliminary results presented in this paper. This will present a set of quantitative outcomes which will detail the statistical relationship between the variables described above. This will be via a range of data presentation methods techniques including figures and maps setting out the spatial patterns and relationships between such variables. The data from the interviews be presented through a set of themes and will seek to identify the key factors which relate to participants’ transportation decision-making.
The paper concludes by identifying factors which underlie the trend of declining car use among young adults, using this to identify actions that planners and others might take to support the creation of sustainable, equitable and inclusive urban areas.
References
Chatterjee, K., Goodwin, P., Schwanen, T., Clark, B., Jain, J., Melia, S., Middleton, J., Plyushteva, A., Ricci, M., Santos, G., & Stokes, G. (2018). Young people’s travel: What’s changed and why? Review and analysis. [Online]. Available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a82a485ed915d74e3402d3e/young-peoples-travel-whats-changed.pdf
Clark, B., Chatterjee, K., & Melia, S. (2016). Changes to commute mode: The role of life events, spatial context, and environmental attitude. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 89, 89-105.
De Vos, J., & Alemi, F. (2020). Are young adults car-loving urbanites? Comparing young and older adults’ residential location choice, travel behavior, and attitudes. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 132, 986-998.
Shove, E., Pantzar, M., & Watson, M. (2012). The dynamics of social practice: Everyday life and how it changes. The Dynamics of Social Practice, 1-208.
Solá, A. G., Vilhelmson, B., & Larsson, A. (2018). Understanding sustainable accessibility in urban planning: Themes of consensus, themes of tension. Journal of Transport Geography, 70, 1-10.
| Keywords | Modal Choice: Transport Decision-Making; Mobility Policies; Sustainable Transport; Equity. |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
