PLANNED COMMUNITIES, SELF-CONTAINMENT AND COMMUTING - A CROSS-NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Many new towns are planned as balanced, self-contained communities, Th is paper examines the association between how self-contained new towns are and how their residents and workers commute, drawing upon experie nces in the US, the UK, metropolitan Paris and greater Stockholm, Whil e American new towns are fairly self-contained, their commuting charac teristics are largely indistinguishable from less-planned control comm unities. Britain's most recent new towns are highly balanced and self- contained, yet they are comparatively auto-dependent, By contrast, the rail-served new towns outside Paris and Stockholm are the least self- contained among the new towns studied; however, most external commutes are by rail transit or other non-auto modes, In general, there was an inverse relationship between self-containment and transit commuting i n the European new towns studied, The paper concludes that other polic ies, like coordinated transit services, more strongly influence commut ing choices among new town residents and workers than initiatives aime d at jobs-housing balance and self-sufficiency.