Juan P. Ospina | Searcharxiv

arXiv2025

Decoding street network morphologies and their correlation to travel mode choice

Urban morphology has long been recognized as a factor shaping human mobility, yet comparative and formal classifications of urban form across metropolitan areas remain limited. Building on theoretical principles of urban structure and advances in unsupervised learning, we systematically classified the built environment of nine U.S. metropolitan areas using structural indicators such as density, connectivity, and spatial configuration. The resulting morphological types were linked to mobility patterns through descriptive statistics, marginal effects estimation, and post hoc statistical testing. Here we show that distinct urban forms are systematically associated with different mobility behaviors, such as reticular morphologies being linked to significantly higher public transport use (marginal effect = 0.49) and reduced car dependence (-0.41), while organic forms are associated with increased car usage (0.44), and substantial declines in public transport (-0.47) and active mobility (-0.30). These effects are statistically robust (p < 1e-19), highlighting that the spatial configuration of urban areas plays a fundamental role in shaping transportation choices. Our findings extend previous work by offering a reproducible framework for classifying urban form and demonstrate the added value of morphological analysis in comparative urban research. These results suggest that urban form should be treated as a key variable in mobility planning and provide empirical support for incorporating spatial typologies into sustainable urban policy design.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2023

Large cities are less efficient for sustainable transport: The ABC of mobility

The use of cars in cities has many negative impacts on its population, including pollution, noise and the use of space. Yet, detecting factors that reduce automobile dependency is a serious challenge, particularly across different regions. Here we model the use of different modes of transport in a city by aggregating active mobility (A), public transport (B) and cars (C), thus expressing the modal share of a city by its ABC triplet. Data for nearly 800 cities across 60 countries is used to model car use and its relationship with city size and income. Our findings suggest that outside the US, longer distances experienced in large cities reduce the propensity of active mobility and of cars, but public transport is more prominent. For cities in the US, roughly 90\% of its mobility depends on cars, regardless of city size. Further, income is strongly related to automobile dependency. Results show that a city with twice the income has 37\% more journeys by car.

physics.soc-ph↗