UC Irvine Institute of Transportation Studies

This study examines the competing roles of transportation access and urban problems in the continuing suburbanization of American metropolitan areas. In particular, the paper asks whether suburbanization is primarily an adjustment to existing transportation networks, as predicted by the monocentric urban model, or whether decentralization is the result of persons and firms fleeing a host of central city problems, as is more consistent with a Tiebout model. This question is empirically tested by examining the determinants of population and employment changes for 365 northern New Jersey municipalities in the 1980s. The findings suggest that both transportation access and intra-metropolitan differences in local characteristics are important determinants of municipal population and employment changes. Furthermore, transportation access and local characteristics have roughly equal policy importance. This suggests that policies aimed at controlling land use patterns should be cognizant of both transportation networks and local characteristics such as fiscal policy and crime rates.