Does living in an urban area affect the daily mobility of working people?

Summary This article focuses on the issue of the isolation of sensitive urban areas, which the city policy aims to reduce. It proposes an evaluation of the impact of the place of residence of employed persons in the Lyon urban area on their overall daily and work-related mobility, with a particular attempt to isolate the specific impact of living in an urban area. The analysis is based on the latest Lyon household travel survey of 2006, supplemented by other spatialized data sources. Residence in a zus district corresponds to a lower total number of trips, shorter distances and shorter daily travel times. The contribution of the specific effect of place of residence, net of the influence of any other characteristic, is about 2 km and 7 minutes less per day. On the other hand, for commuting to and from work, the "zus" effect operates in the opposite direction: all other things being equal, workers residing in a zus neighborhood travel 1.5 km more per day than workers residing in other neighborhoods, i.e., 10% more time. These moderate but statistically significant differences corroborate the hypotheses of isolation and spatial mismatch of workers in disadvantaged neighborhoods and encourage the continuation of this type of analysis in other urban contexts.