The Personal City: The Experiential, Cognitive Nature of Travel and Activity and Implications

250 Pages·2012·7.42 MB·English

UC Berkeley
Dissertations
Title
The Personal City: The Experiential, Cognitive Nature of Travel and Activity and Implications
for Accessibility
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7014d9cg
Author
Mondschein, Andrew Samuel
Publication Date
2013-08-01

Peer reviewed
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University of California
University of California Transportation Center
UCTC Dissertation UCTC-DISS-2013-02

The Personal City:
The Experiential, Cognitive Nature of Travel and Activity
and Implications for Accessibility

Andrew Samuel Mondschein
University of California, Los Angeles
2013
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles

The Personal City:
The Experiential, Cognitive Nature of Travel and Activity
and Implications for Accessibility

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
in Urban Planning

by

Andrew Samuel Mondschein

2012
© Copyright by
Andrew Samuel Mondschein
2012
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

The Personal City:
The Experiential, Cognitive Nature of Travel and Activity
and Implications for Accessibility

by

Andrew Samuel Mondschein
Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Planning
University of California, Los Angeles, 2012
Professor Brian D. Taylor, Chair

Transportation planning research addresses accessibility from diverse approaches, focusing
varyingly on the usability of the transportation system as a whole, a particular mode, the pattern
of land uses, or the wherewithal of individuals and communities to make use of those systems.
One aspect of accessibility that has received relatively little attention from planners is its
cognitive, experiential aspect. Individuals’ activity and travel choices require not just money and
time but also information about opportunities in the city. This component of an individual’s
accessibility is highly personal but also dependent on the terrain of land uses and transportation
options shaped by planners and policymakers. I seek to extend current accessibility research,
addressing shortcomings in how the literature deals with individual experience of the city and
knowledge. Through a series of empirical analyses of activity patterns and cognitive maps of the
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Los Angeles region, I explore the factors that shape individual accessibility. The first analysis
investigates the spatial nature of personal cities, using the activity spaces of respondents to
explore the types of opportunities that different populations within a city can access. The second
demonstrates the differences – depending on mode of travel – among individuals’ perceptions of
the city, even when location is held constant. The third analysis continues an exploration of the
personal city by considering its fundamental components.
Overall, the analyses support the relevance of the personal city framework to accessibility
research, highlighting in particular that planning interventions are filtered through experiential
and cognitive processes. The findings highlight that the accessibility impacts of transportation
and land use patterns are felt not just in the instantaneous calculations of a microeconomic
choice framework, but also in the long-term, developmental processes of cognition and
experience. For urban planners, the implications of this research include evidence of how the
built environment can effectively reduce travel while maintaining accessibility and how different
transportation modes afford varying levels of functional accessibility. Overall, I find that
experience, information, and learning are elements of urban daily life traditionally neglected by
planners but with potential to increase opportunity and accessibility for diverse urban
populations.
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The dissertation of Andrew Mondschein is approved.

Evelyn Blumenberg

Rick Paik-Schoenberg

Brian D. Taylor, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles
2012
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To Krista

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1

2 Literature Review...............................................................................................................16

3 Conceptual Framework: The Personal City .......................................................................42

4 Data and Methods ..............................................................................................................55

5 Activity Spaces and Access to Opportunities ....................................................................79

6 Active and Passive Travel: The Foundation of Spatial Knowledge ................................132

7 Building a Better Cognitive Map: Travel Experience and Reliance on Landmarks .......158

8 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................191

Appendix A: South Los Angeles Cognitive Survey Instrument .................................................202

Appendix B: UCLA Cognitive Survey Instrument .....................................................................210

Appendix C: Model Variable Correlation Table ........................................................................218

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................219

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1: Transportation-Land Use Relationship ......................................................................18
Figure 2.2: Hägerstrand’s Time-Space Fishbowl .........................................................................23
Figure 2.3: Downtown Los Angeles as Represented in Image of the City (Lynch 1960) ............31

Figure 4.1: SCAG Respondent Density (Residential Locations) ..................................................59
Figure 4.2: Activity Density/Residential Density Ratio ...............................................................60
Figure 4.3: Cognitive Mapping Survey Sites and Regional Context ............................................62
Figure 4.4: South Los Angeles Survey Site and Environs ............................................................64
Figure 4.5: UCLA Campus and Survey Site .................................................................................65
Figure 4.6: UCLA Survey Site and Environs ...............................................................................66
Figure 4.7: Moran’s I Formulae ....................................................................................................71

Figure 5.1: Activity Space and Travel Measures ..........................................................................84
Figure 5.2: Standard Deviational Ellipse (SDE) Area by Personal Characteristics .....................89
Figure 5.3: Activity Rectangle (AR) Area by Personal Characteristics .......................................90
Figure 5.4: Distance Traveled (DT) by Personal Characteristics .................................................91
Figure 5.5: Number of Trips (NT) by Personal Characteristics ....................................................92
Figure 5.6: Weekday Activities by Type and Activity Space Area ..............................................97
Figure 5.7: Weekend Activities by Type and Activity Space Area ..............................................98
Figure 5.8: Transit Share across the Region (2000 Census Data) ..............................................114
Figure 5.9: Model 5 (SDE area) Homoscedasticity Plot .............................................................115
Figure 5.10: Model 5 (SDE area) Normality of Residuals Plot ..................................................116
Figure 5.11: Spatial Distribution of Activity Space Sizes (IDW Method) .................................119
Figure 5.12: Spatial Distribution of Income Coefficient in GWR Model (Inverse
Distance Weighting Method) ...........................................................................................125
Figure 5.13: Spatial Distribution of Population Density Coefficient in GWR Model
(Inverse Distance Weighting Method) .............................................................................127
Figure 5.14: GWR Model Homoscedasticity Plot ......................................................................129
Figure 5.15: GWR Model Normality of Residuals Plot .............................................................130

Figure 6.1: Model 4 Homoscedasticity Plot ...............................................................................146
Figure 6.2: Model 4 Normality of Residuals Plot .......................................................................147

Figure 7.1: South Los Angeles “Home to Survey Site” Maps ....................................................161
Figure 7.2: South Los Angeles “Survey Site to LA City Hall” Maps ........................................162
Figure 7.3: UCLA “Home to Survey Site” Maps .......................................................................163
Figure 7.4: UCLA “Survey Site to Santa Monica Pier” Maps ...................................................164
Figure 7.5: Map Elements by Cognitive Travel Style ................................................................171
Figure 7.6: Ratio of Landmark to Route Segment Elements ......................................................173
Figure 7.7: Ratio of Landmark to Choice Point Elements ..........................................................174
Figure 7.8: Elements Used to Describe Home and Work Locations, % of Respondents by
Cognitive Travel Group ...................................................................................................178
Figure 7.9: Residential Locations for South Los Angeles Survey Respondents ........................186
Figure 7.10: Krige of Years Spent in the Neighborhood ............................................................188
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