Urban expansion and neighbourhood commuting patterns in the Beijing metropolitan region: A multilevel analysis

Abstract

This study adopts a spatial perspective to analyse the complex commuting patterns of the Beijing metropolitan region. By combining measures of the built environment, neighbourhood characteristics and development time periods, a four-fold neighbourhood classification was derived by cluster analysis to reflect different urbanisation contexts. Commuting flows were mapped to illustrate the spatial mismatch of home–work locations during the rampant urbanisation process. The novel use of a multilevel modelling approach shows how individual socio-economic attributes and neighbourhood factors, and their interactive effects, explain the varied commuting patterns. The cross-level interactions of variables highlight the predominant influence of individual attributes, which also interact with locational conditions of neighbourhood with differential explanatory power, on commuting patterns.