Alumna Pam Dalal (PhD 2014) and Geography Professor Kostas Goulias recently uploaded an article on academia.com titled “An Analysis of Jobs, Business Establishments, Housing, and Commuting Travel in the Smart Growth Centers of the Puget Sound Region.” Academia.com “is a social networking website for academics. It was launched in September 2008, and the site has over 11 million registered users as of 2014. The platform can be used to share papers, monitor their impact, and follow the research in a particular field” (source).
To quote part of the article’s abstract, “Using the Puget Sound region as a case study, this paper discusses the ability for a highly diverse smart growth center to satisfy the employment and activity needs for its residents. Within the Puget Sound region, planned smart growth centers with differing levels of diversity are examined for their ability to induce reduced travel distances. The study uses two sources of data: geo-coded business data within the Puget Sound smart growth centers which includes industry type and employment totals and travel behaviors for residents, both for year 2010. Exploratory and regression analysis methods estimate relationships between industry diversity and reduced vehicle miles travelled within the smart growth centers. Diversity plays a key role in meeting the entire spectrum of activity needs for smart growth residents. Centers with a dominant industry, such as retail or health, do not provide the destination balance that allows individuals to fulfill their travel needs in smaller distances.”
