| Abstract: |
A sound empirical and quantitative analysis on the relationship between
different patterns of urban expansion and the environmental or social costs of
mobility is rare, and the few studies available provide at best a qualitative
discussion of these issues. Some recent tentative studies on the metropolitan
area of Milan have empirically explored whether different patterns of urban
expansion generate different levels of land use and heterogeneous impacts of
urban mobility. The results confirmed the expectation that a higher
environmental impact of mobility may result from more extensive and sprawling
urban development, from recent urbanisation processes and from residential
specialisation. The present paper extends the previous empirical analysis to
seven major Italian metropolitan areas (namely, Bari, Florence, Naples, Padua,
Perugia, Potenza and Turin) in order to corroborate the previous tentative
results for the Italian context. The novelty of the prese! nt paper is
threefold. First, we are interested in exploring the changes that have
occurred due to the increased intensity of mobility across a ten-year period,
from 1981 to 1991, which corresponds to the Italian economic boom years.
Secondly, using an econometric analysis of cross-section data, we consider
several metropolitan areas simultaneously, and are therefore able to explore
whether there are significant differences in the way the model explains
variations in the mobility impact across various Italian urban areas. And
finally, we offer a structural interpretation of the causal chain in the
explanation of the mobility impact intensity by using Causal Path Analysis as
a statistical test framework. |