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Mixed land use index and public transport catchments

A mix or diversity in land use has been broadly recognised as having a positive correlation with active and public transport. Increasingly questions are raised about the characteristics of public transport trips particularly in relation to the fact that most actually consist of two walk components and one public transport component. This paper seeks to gain a greater understanding of walk only trips to public transport, especially train stations. Does a greater level of land use mix, or more equal land use mix around train stations in northern Melbourne correlate with higher levels of walking to that station or is the need to access the station itself sufficient to support walk only trips to the station? What is the potential of mixed use to increase and encourage greater levels of walking to stations? Could the application and use of a mix index as part of station area development assist in planning environments that contribute to increases in walking to access train stations? This paper aims to take the first step in addressing these questions in the Melbourne context to identify any broad trends and patterns, any relationships and additional data requirements and directions for further research. To address these questions this paper adopts and tests a Dutch mix index that identifies an equal mix of residential and non residential uses as the optimum land use mix. This index will be applied in the Melbourne context to analyse the mix of land uses within a 1km catchment of train stations in the northern corridor of Melbourne and to examine the relationship between the land use mix and levels of walking to each train station. This paper examines the extent of the existing mix of uses in train station catchments in the northern region of Melbourne, within three local government areas Yarra, Darebin and Whittlesea. For this study, a variation of the ‘mixed use index’ (MXI) developed by van den Hoek (2008) has been used and tested. This index identifies the ratio of residential to nonresidential land use. The index was developed to make the complexity of the functional mix in an urban district discussable, comparable and measurable through a simple index. In the research a mixed use index developed by van den Hoek (2008) was adopted and tested which develops a ratio of residential to non-residential land use. For the MXI the ideal score to achieve a vibrant and walkable city has been defined as 50, reflective of a 50/50 mix of residential and non-residential land uses. In contrast, an area with the MXI = 100 has only residential uses and an area with the MXI = 0 has no residential uses. The index is measured on the walkable scale of urban blocks within an urban district and in terms of floor space (Van den Hoek 2008:5). Van den Hoek argues that ‘It does not come as a surprise that inside the city ring of Barcelona the proportion of residential vs non-residential has always been kept on the same 50/50..since the very beginning of the 19 th century (Busquets 2005). The metropolitan urbanity of Barcelona within the ring and the canal zone of the Amsterdam provide proof from experience that in order to create a lively and vibrant city centre the 50/50 proportion works’ (Van den Hoek 2008:4). The advantage of this index is its (intended) simplicity. However, this translates at the same time into a shortcoming as a 50/50 mix can mean an area with 50 per cent residential uses and 50 per cent open space/park uses as well as 50 per cent residential uses and 50 per cent commercial uses. This makes the 50/50 index somewhat opaque. Nevertheless, this 50/50 ratio will be tested in the analysis of public