Robert Cervero’s research while affiliated with University of California, Berkeley and other places

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Publications (154)


Better Environments
  • Chapter

January 2017

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16 Reads

Robert Cervero

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The transportation sector’s environmental footprint is immense and growing. To gain political traction and public acceptance, making places that are attractive, accessible, and highly livable must also meaningfully contribute to better environments. By better environments we mean fewer emissions from cars and buildings but also reduced fossil fuel consumption, stabilized climates, protected land and natural habitats, and in general, healthier, more resourceful places in which to live, work, learn, and play.


The Global South

January 2017

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45 Reads

The United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development met in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016 to launch a new global commitment to sustainable urban development. Habitat III, as the conference is called, resulted in the adoption of the New Urban Agenda, which prioritizes the relationship between urbanization and sustainable development and promotes a global vision of just, safe, healthy, accessible, affordable, resilient, and sustainable cities for all. These objectives fit well with the call for planning beyond mobility. However, as the New Urban Agenda emphasizes, the challenges of sustainable urban development in the Global South can be daunting. High poverty rates and poor access to jobs and education hinder economic and social opportunities. Achieving a better balance between mobility and place might seem less important in places where there is not enough investment in mobility or place, not to mention education or other infrastructure. Nevertheless, poor design around new transportation infrastructure increases travel times, decreases safety, and encourages a shift to private cars. By ignoring the safety and comfort of pedestrians and cyclists, local governments not only treat poorer residents like second-class citizens but virtually guarantee that they will switch to cars and motorcycles as they get wealthier.


Urban Recalibration

January 2017

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79 Reads

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1 Citation

Beyond Mobility is about reordering priorities. In the planning and design of cities, far more attention must go toward serving the needs and aspirations of people and the creation of great places as opposed to expediting movement. Historically it has been the opposite. In the United States and increasingly elsewhere, investments in motorways and underground rail systems have been first and foremost about moving people between point A and point B as quickly and safely as possible. On the surface, of course, this is desirable. However, the cumulative consequences of this nearly singular focus on expeditious movement have revealed themselves with passage of time, measured in smoggy air basins, sprawling suburbs, and—despite hundreds of billions of dollars in investments—a failure to stem traffic congestion, to name a few. An urban recalibration is in order, we argue, one that follows a more people- and place-focused approach to city building.


Emerging Technologies

January 2017

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15 Reads

The digital revolution is giving way to a robotics revolution that is likely to touch nearly every aspect of human life. Scientists and enthusiasts are working to perfect the three-dimensional printing of meat, machine guns, and nearly everything in between. Medical advances are leading to longer, more active lives. Virtual reality goggles are not only changing how people consume videogames and movies but could change how they conduct meetings and communicate with loved ones. Auto manufacturers, technology giants, and startups are working to perfect the technologies that will allow cars, trucks, and buses to drive themselves safely on city streets in the coming decades. Many of these technological innovations will shape not just how people travel but how much they travel, where they choose to live and work, and what kinds of cities they inhabit.


Better Economies

January 2017

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17 Reads

Connections—between and within cities—are vital to sustained economic growth, prosperity, and healthy living. Country roads connect farmers to markets and agricultural extension services, allowing the sale of crop surpluses and increasing food security. Metro lines connect skilled labor to good-paying downtown jobs. Bikeways also have utilitarian value plus the added bonus of promoting active travel and providing access to nature and the great outdoors. For avid cyclists, they make work–live–play balance possible. Decades of research convincingly shows that transport infrastructure is among the most powerful tools available for growing local and regional economies and enhancing quality of life.



Figure 1: Graphical representation of the research hypothesis
Figure 2: The three periods in the timeline of a trip (X-axis: Time - T, Y-axis: Utility - U) 
Table 5 : The final MLM models for predicting VKT generated by work trips
Table 6 : The final MLM models for predicting VKT generated by shopping trips
Table 9 : The final ORL models for predicting work trip frequency by private vehicle

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Stay local or go regional? Urban form effects on vehicle use at different spatial scales: A theoretical concept and its application to the San Francisco Bay Area
  • Article
  • Full-text available

June 2015

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323 Reads

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45 Citations

Journal of Transport and Land Use

This paper explores the respective roles of local and regional characteristics of urban form on vehicle travel. We hypothesize that the effects of urban form on vehicle use at the local and regional levels are complementary, and we introduce the concept of local and regional action spaces, which are defined based on the accessibility of alternative means of transport within an acceptable travel time, to test this hypothesis. Multilevel and ordered logit models are developed for the San Francisco Bay Area to estimate the effects of urban form and socioeconomic characteristics on vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) and vehicle trip frequency (for work, shopping, and social/recreational purposes). We find that the two urban scale characteristics exert complementary effects on VKT. However, because people in the San Francisco Bay Area display significantly lower VKT in the local than in the regional action space, we conclude that regional-scale interventions would contribute more to the policy objective of VKT reduction, although local-scale design policies might also help reach this policy goal. Intersection density (for the local action space models) and regional jobs accessibility (for the regional action space models) demonstrated the strongest and most significant relationships with VKT. The built environment did not appear to significantly affect vehicle trip frequency, which is likely due to the uniformly high levels of vehicle use in both the local and regional action spaces in the area.

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Do people consider an acceptable travel time? Evidence from Berkeley, CA

April 2015

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398 Reads

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88 Citations

Journal of Transport Geography

This paper explores the extent to which people identify an acceptable travel time for each trip they want to make and investigates the primary characteristics of this behavioural threshold. We assume that an acceptable travel time is defined through utilitarian processes that are related to cognitive and affective evaluations of travel that develop throughout a person’s lifetime. We apply a mixed methods approach to explore our hypothesis, based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with a stratified, according to commuting mode, random sample of 20 individuals living in Berkeley, CA. Our results support the validity of the acceptable travel time concept and offer (a) initial evidence on its variation to the travel mode and sociodemographic characteristics and (b) insights into people’s perceptions, attitudes, feelings and experiences about their travel. Thus, our results can contribute to a better understanding of individuals’ travel decisions and valuation of travel time and can inform time–space and accessibility research.


Figure 3. Scatterplot of Riders per BRT Kilometer and Population Density Among 105 BRT Cities. The challenges of leveraging TOD with BRT investment is probed in the next three subsections. The struggles faced by two of the world's most extensive and highly regarded BRT cities-Bogotá and Ahmedabad-are contrasted with what remains the world's best-case example of BRT-land-use integration-Curitiba, Brazil.
Figure 4. Footprints of new developments in Station Area and Control Area for an Intermediate Station, 1998 to 2011. Source: Suzuki, Cervero, and Iuchi, 2013.
Figure 5. Footprints of new developments in Station Area and Control Area for an End-of-theLine Station, 1998 to 2011. Source: Suzuki, Cervero, and Iuchi, 2013.
Transport Infrastructure and the Environment in the Global South: Sustainable Mobility and Urbanism

December 2014

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1,828 Reads

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84 Citations

Jurnal Perencanaan Wilayah dan Kota

Abstrak. Integrasi infrastruktur transportasi dan perkembangan kota harus ditingkatkan kepentingannya. Di banyak kota di belahan bumi bagian selatan, investasi pada Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) memberikan kesempatan untuk peningkatan tersebut. Akan tetapi, sampai saat ini, sistem BRT telah gagal dalam menciptakan pembangunan yang kompak dan multi-guna bukan saja karena kurangnya perencanaan strategis kawasan stasiun tetapi juga dampak dari penempatan jalur-jalur dan stasiun pada wilayah perkotaan yang stagnan dan pada median jalan yang sibuk. Sistem BRT selama ini dipertimbangkan dan dirancang sebagai suatu investasi pergerakan dan bukan pembentuk kota. Disebabkan mayoritas pertumbuhan kota di masa depan di seluruh dunia akan berada pada kota-kota menengah yang cocok untuk investasi BRT, kesempatan untuk membuat sistem BRT sebagai investasi pembentuk kota tidak boleh disia-siakan. Pembangunan yang berorientasi transit adalah salah satu dari sejumlah model yang paling menjanjikan untuk mendorong pola pergerakan dan urbanisasi yang lebih berkelanjutan di kota-kota di belahan bumi selatan.Kata kunci. Transportasi publik, bus rapid transit, tata guna lahan, keberlanjutan, pembangunan berorientasi transitAbstract. The integration of transport infrastructure and urban development must be elevated in importance. In many cities of the Global South, recent Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) investments provide an unprecedented opportunity to do just that. To date, however, BRT systems have failed to leverage compact, mixed-use development due not only to little strategic station-area planning but also factors like siting lines and stations in stagnant urban districts and busy roadway medians. BRT systems are being conceived and designed as mobility investments rather than city-shaping ones. Given that the majority of future urban growth worldwide will be in intermediate-size cities well-suited for BRT investments, the opportunities for making these not only mobility investments but city-shaping investments as well should not be squandered. Transit-oriented development is but one of a number of built forms that hold considerable promise toward placing cities of the Global South on more sustainable mobility and urbanization pathways.Keywords. Public Transport, bus rapid transit, land use, sustainability, transit oriented development


BRT TOD: Leveraging transit oriented development with bus rapid transit investments

November 2014

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880 Reads

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207 Citations

Transport Policy

Bus rapid transit (BRT) systems have gained prominence worldwide as a cost-effective alternative to urban rail investments. However, some question the city-shaping potential of BRT, in part due to a belief it delivers fewer regional accessibility benefits than rail, but also to the social stigma some assign to bus-based forms of mass mobility. Notwithstanding the successes of cities like Curitiba and Ottawa at integrating BRT and land development (Cervero, 1998. The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry, Island Press, Washington, D.C.), doubt remains over BRT’s ability to promote less car-dependent, more sustainable patterns of urban growth in rapidly motorizing and suburbanizing cities. This paper probes the opportunities and challenges of leveraging transit-oriented development (TOD) through BRT investments. The policy context of BRT and urban growth is first described. Evidence on the influences of BRT on urban development and land values is then presented followed by discussions on density and ridership performance of BRT cities. Attention next turns to the fundamental tension of mediating between the logistical and place-making functions of BRT stations. Failure to do so has generally resulted in low-cost, high-performance investments at the expense of suppressing TOD opportunities. Case experiences in Bogota Colombia and Ahmedabad India underscore that near-term mobility gains took precedence over shaping urban growth over the long-term. The paper closes with discussions on implementation. Based on a survey of 27 global cities with BRT systems, tools introduced to date to leverage TOD are reviewed. Survey respondents also commented on barriers that stand in the way of BRT TOD in their cities. While BRT is often viewed as being suited to serving lower density, outlying settings, it is believed that under the right conditions, BRT can also be as influential in inducing urban redevelopment and shaping urban growth in more sustainable formats.


Citations (81)


... Estudio de caso: a la informalidad en el transporte, considerando cualquier tipo de vehículo que preste servicios informales (Cervero & Golub, 2011;J. Evans et al., 2018;Heinrichs & Bernet, 2014;Kumar et al., 2016). ...

Reference:

Moto-trabajadores informales en la ciudad de Cartagena
Information public transport: a global perspective
  • Citing Chapter
  • March 2011

... Generally, land use models attempt to project future land use patterns based on historical trends, however, could potentially lead to biases or inaccuracies in the resulting land use and travel demand forecasts (Lemp et al., 2008). Because of this deficiency, scenario-based planning is increasingly applied since the late 1980s (Hickman et al., 2012;Jantz et al., 2004;Layman and Horner, 2010;Outwater et al., 2014;Shiftan et al., 2003;Waddell, 2011;Waddell, 2002;Wei et al., 2017). In a land use-transportation scenario planning, a set of land use scenarios that have certain probabilities of developing in the future or that are desired by planners is constructed first. ...

Effect of Smart Growth Policies on Travel Demand
  • Citing Book
  • October 2013

... Regarding the built environment's influence on transfer, researchers typically adopt the "5D principle", which includes density, diversity, design, distance to transit, and destination accessibility [20,21]. For example, existing studies [22] have found that high population and employment densities significantly promote cycling, while other research [23] has noted that different land use densities have varying effects on bike-metro transfer trips. ...

Network design, built and natural environments, and bicycle commuting: Evidence from British cities and towns
  • Citing Article
  • September 2018

Transport Policy

... The expected impact is a sustainable improvement in the quality of urban space in the aspects of economy, society, and the environment. Ibraeva et al. show that TOD-based transportation is the core concept of sustainability and unites integrated and walk-able communities with high-quality rail systems (Cervero et al., 2017;Ibraeva et al., 2022). This concept creates a low-carbon lifestyle by enabling people to live, work, and play without relying on cars for mobility (Ibraeva et al., 2020). ...

Transit-Oriented Development
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2017

... Urban transportation, i.e., the act of moving something (goods) or someone (people), and urban mobility, i.e., the ability of a person to freely move or be moved, constitute integral elements of the functional dimension of cities nowadays. Alongside other significant factors such as land use and urban planning, urban mobility plays a crucial role in shaping how citizens carry out their daily activities [1]. ...

Beyond Mobility
  • Citing Book
  • January 2017

... Demand management promot tainable travel through policies like parking management. By integrating these d sions, TOD offers a holistic approach to sustainable urban development, add sprawl, congestion, and environmental degradation [47]. ...

Transforming Cities with Transit

... They also underline that compact city development can bring marginal benefits, especially if accompanied by excessive population density or lack of accompanying network measures (Ewing and Hamidi, 2015;Ewing et al, 2018;Li et al, 2019;Fan and Chapman, 2022). Sustainable compact development with public transport attractiveness offers greater potential of durable lowering of car dependency and associated traffic externalities (Ewing et al, 2018;Andong and Sajor, 2017;Ewing and Cervero, 2017). Moreover, our simulation results for Warsaw expose the risks of (further) sprawl development as a By examining possible future scenarios of continuing sprawl and compact development, we show how urban planning decisions not only shape the physical landscape but also impact transport emissions, air quality, and population exposure to pollutants. ...

“Does Compact Development Make People Drive Less?” The Answer Is Yes
  • Citing Article
  • January 2017

... Az olyan radikális intézkedések, mint például az autópályák eltávolítása és az autópályák által elfoglalt belvárosi területek átalakítása zöldúttá, gazdasági előnyt jelentenek Szöul és más nagyvárosok számára is, amit legszemléletesebben a telekárak emelkedése és a cégösszetétel változása mutat. A 2000-es évek elején Szöul városrehabilitációs programot indított el, amely magában foglalta az utak és autópályák által elfoglalt városi tér visszahódítását, különös tekintettel az újonnan épített városrészek lakói számára épült bekötőutak felszámolására és helyettesítő infrastruktúra építésére (Cervero 2010). ...

Urban Reclamation and Regeneration in Seoul, South Korea
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2010

... More broadly, TOD has helped to enhance urban sustainability agendas through city boosterism and place-making, helping to improve the reputation and aesthetic values of cities (Ferbrache and Knowles, 2017). It has also been linked to social goals including increased ridership levels, formation of civic and public spaces, and in itself is a hub for community development (Bernick and Cervero, 1997;Cervero, 2010). However, there is some evidence of TOD unintentionally increasing levels of economic segregation and leading to gentrification, as it usually increases land and property values which can displace poorer residents and lower-income economic activities (Rayle, 2015). ...

Transit Transformations: Private Financing and Sustainable Urbanism in Hong Kong and Tokyo
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2010