The Effect of Housing Market Segmentation on Commuting

Spatial sorting of housing market in a metropolitanarea is relatively well studied but its implicationsin transportation are understudied. Housing marketsegmentation is defined as a degree to which ametropolitan area is divided into spatial housingsubmarkets. The book looks at how housing marketsegmentation is related to commute length at ametropolitan scale. The analysis is preceded bydelineating housing submarkets by fuzzy clusteringmethods and defining the index of housing marketsegmentation that measures the separation amonghousing submarkets. Results show that metropolitanareas characterized by incongruous housing market aremore likely to be associated with longer vehiclemiles of commute while other factors are controlledfor. It is speculated that deepening housing marketsegmentation constrains housing choice and residentscompensate for the constraint by longer commute. Thebook will be useful for those interested in landuse-transportation interaction and the application offuzzy classification to socioeconomic data.