HKUST Public Policy Bulletin Issue No.3

Impacts of the Built Environment on Job Accessibility: A Case Study of Hong Kong

Pengyu ZHU and Xinying TAN

 

 

The built environment can significantly influence job accessibility. Nevertheless, the relationship between the built environment and job accessibility varies across cities in light of local charateristics. Previous studies of the relationship between the built environment and job accessibility have centered on low-to-medium-density Western cities. These studies’ empirical results may not apply entirely to Hong Kong, which is highly dense. For instance, higher employment density may reduce residents’ commute distance and time in sparsely populated cities. As a city becomes denser, further concentration of employment in particular neighborhoods will cause traffic jams and hamper job accessibility (Jin et al., 2017). Moreover, the transportation modes available to Hong Kong residents differ substantially from those available to residents living in the West. According to the 2016 Population By-Census (Census and Statistics Department (Hong Kong), 2017), nearly 80% of the working population with fixed places of work in Hong Kong were public transit users, while residents in the West, especially in low-to-medium-density cities, commute mainly by private vehicles. Therefore, a well-designed empirical study is needed to analyze the unique relationship between the built environment and job accessibility in Hong Kong. This bulletin, based on a paper written by Zhu et al. (2020), analyzes the following issues:

 

  • What are the impacts of built-environment features on job accessibility for Hong Kong residents, measured by commute time and commute distance?
  • How do these impacts vary across commuters using public transit and private vehicles?
  • How do these impacts vary across public transit commuters using rails, buses, and both rails and buses?

 

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Authors

 

Pengyu ZHU, Associate Professor in the Division of Public Policy at HKUST. His research areas cover big data and urban planning, sustainable transportation, economic development policy, housing and land use policy, and migration and employment. His publications have appeared in leading journals, e.g., Landscape and Urban Planning, Transportation Research Part D, Cities, and Journal of Cleaner Production. His research has been cited frequently in well-known scientific media, e.g., the Wall Street Journal, Slate Magazine, and CityLab. In recent years, he obtained more than HK$3,800,000 in research grants from government agencies. He was the winner of the 5th Charles M. Tiebout Prize in Regional Science in 2011 and the Regional Science Springer Prize in 2014. Currently, he is an associate editor of The Journal of Urban Management and a special issue co-editor of Transportation Research Part D.Policy & Society and Data & Policy.

 

 

 

Xinying TAN, PhD candidate in the Division of Public Policy at HKUST. Ms. TAN’s research focuses on transportation, travel behaviour, sustainable innovation development, and other related urban policy areas. Her recent work examines the effectiveness of various policy measures taken against the COVID-19 pandemic and the influencing factors. Some of her collaborative research papers have been published in Transportation Research Part D, Sustainable Cities and Society, and BMC Public Health.

 

Further reading

Zhu, P., Ho, S. N., Jiang, Y., & Tan, X. (2020). Built environment, commuting behaviour and job accessibility in a rail-based dense urban context. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 87, 102438. Data & Policy, 3: e29.