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Topic: Understanding Where We Live and How We Travel: The Development of an Online Visual Survey Tool and Pilot Studies Evaluating Preferences in Residential Neighborhood Choice and Commute

Summary: Understanding changing residential preferences—especially as they are represented within land use and travel demand models—is fundamental to understanding the drivers of future housing, land use and transportation policies. As communities struggle to address a rising number of social challenges with increasing economic uncertainty, transportation and land use planning have become increasingly centered on assumptions concerning the market for residential environments and travel choices. In response, an added importance has been placed on the development of toolkits capable of providing a robust and flexible understanding of how differing assumptions contribute to a set of planning scenarios and impact future residential location decisions.

In this presentation, we discuss one such improvement that can be added to the transportation planning toolkit: an innovative visual online survey tool. This tool was developed to provide a means for researchers to communicate the residential environment to the public. Within this study, we test the ability for the general population to see neighborhood environments consistently. Then we apply this tool within an original data collection, which focuses on examining the residential preferences and trade-offs between neighborhood and commute choices. We discuss the methods developed, lessons learned, and results from the Oregon-based pilot studies testing and applying this new tool.

Bio: Kristina completed her undergraduate degree at Oregon State University in civil engineering and is currently a Graduate Research Assistant and doctoral student in the civil engineering program at Portland State. She studies under Dr. Kelly Clifton, focusing on the studying relationship between travel behavior and land use. She has worked on projects such as the Contextual Influences on Trip Generation, Examining Consumer Behavior and Travel Choices, and the current study Understanding Residential Location Choices for Climate Change and Transportation Decision Making. Kristina is currently a Maseeh College of Engineering Fellow and a Dwight D. Eisenhower Graduate Transportation Fellow. Last year, she was also inducted into the Denise Dee Denton Women Engineers Hall of Fame for her work with the Oregon Department of Transportation in the Transportation Planning and Analysis Unit.