Impacts of spatial mismatch on commuting time of urban residents in China

Abstract

In much of studies on spatial mismatch between residential and employer locations, job accessibility has been measured. However, the apparent disadvantages of the traditional measurement methods on the studies of Chinese cities have been noted. This paper proposed an optimized method for job accessibility measurement by introducing the weigh coefficient of job opportunity, which quantifies the degree of uneven distribution of job opportunity in the Chinese cities. Take Nanjing city for example, this new method was used to measure the spatial distribution of job opportunity, investigate the spatial patterns and analyze the influences of job accessibility on commuting behavior. The results show that the distribution of job accessibility in Nanjing exhibits the different spatial patterns and mechanisms compared with US cases.

Keywords

• spatial mismatch
• job accessibility
• commuting time
• MNL model