Editorial introduction

Abstract

Many factors can contribute to sustainable transport, for instance green/greener transport modes, spatial design and connectivity among transport infrastructure, land use or urban form, travel behaviour, etc. In the first paper of this issue, Chen and Felkner (2020) conduct an extensive review on the relationship between sustainable transport and urban form, and point out that many researchers have only discussed relationships between sustainable transport with individual elements of urban forms, without considering the interrelationships among the elements of urban forms such as population density, concentration within the urban-rural context, and land use mix. To fill this gap, the authors perform robust regressions on sustainable transport indicators and urban form elements using the case of the U.S. State of Florida. They found that the interaction effects among urban form elements show in a “threshold, negative-to-positive” synergy, which implies that certain expected effects from urban form elements on sustainable transport outcomes are conditional depending on levels of other urban form elements. Although the paper was not able to discuss interaction effects among all the elements, the argument is justified, the analysis is acceptable and the paper raised a research question that needs wider attention.