Transportation implications of metropolitan spatial planning in mega-city Beijing

In the mega-cities of developing countries, access to workplaces has become increasingly difficult due to dramatic rises in commuting times, reflecting both limited transport infrastructure and particular forms of metropolitan spatial planning. In the light of this, this article examines the impact of spatial planning on workers' commuting time, using the case of Beijing. The analysis, using travel data collected from 613 households in 2006, shows that workers' commuting time has a statistically significant relationship with location variables related to spatial planning, when socio-economic factors and transport provision ore controlled for. Self-contained and high-density development as well as compact land use in the peripheral constellations could play a positive role in shortening workers' commuting times. At the some time, longer commuting times will result from illegal and dispersed development in green belts and outer suburban areas. The results suggest that better metropolitan spatial planning would be one efficient way of containing the dramatic growth of commuting times and congestion in central Beijing, particularly where local government has limited financial capacity to produce transport infrastructure in the context of a growing urban population.