Urban Travel Behavior and Socio-Spatial Issues in the Mena Region: What Do We Know?

Abstract

Unlike literature and studies coming from high-income or Western countries, the existing conducted on the Middle East and North Africa fail to draw a nearly complete image of the characteristics of passenger travel behaviors in the urban areas of the region. This gap necessitates a holistic review of the previous studies and comparing their results of those of the international findings. This paper summarizes the status of urban travel behavior studies on the MENA region under eight categories of socioeconomics, land use, perceptions and attitudes, urban sprawl, neighborhood design, public transportation use, active mobility, and new technologies and concepts. Descriptive literature review and desk research depicts both lack of research results or data and differences between the behaviors in the MENA region and the Western countries. Moreover, based on the background review, this paper provides a list of recommendations for having more sustainable mobility in the MENA region.

Keywords

• urban transportation planning
• travel behavior
• land use planning
• urban form
• mena region