Home-to-work commuting, urban form and potential energy savings: A local scale approach to regional statistics

The link between transport energy consumption and land use patterns has been the focus of a considerable amount of academic works over the past decades. While many empirical researches are backed up with solid statistical techniques, most of them do not fully consider the influence of scale underlying empirical quantitative investigations. Using fine-scale home-to-work commuting data for Wallonia (Belgium), this paper re-evaluates Breheny’s (1995) assertion that urban structure should hold the characteristics of major cities if substantial energy savings are to be achieved. A local scale approach highlights efficient settlements in terms of transport energy consumption not only within major towns, but also within remote rural areas. Furthermore, results suggest that influencing the urban form following local energy efficient examples rather than regional ones could also yield significant gains, without an extreme policy stance of re-urbanisation in major cities.

► Potential energy savings from home-to-work commuting is evaluated.
► Both the regional and the local scale are taken into account.
► Local energy efficient settlements can also yield significant gains.
► Two similar methods have very different policy implications.
► Breheny’s (1995) argument against the compact city is reappraised.