JOBS-HOUSING BALANCE CONCEPT

Jobs and housing balance refers to the parity between a number of jobs and the amount of housing within a geographic area (Cervero, 1989a, 1989b). Other related terms with similar definitions include smart growth control, urbanism, neotraditional neighborhood design, cluster development (VCTC, 2004). Theoretically, if there is a harmony between jobs and housing that are financially accessible to the employees in a community, then certain environmental impacts such as traffic congestion may be reduced. Harmony occurs when the number of jobs and the amount of housing available to people holding these jobs are in balance. This implies that workers will have the required working skills for the jobs and that the employment compensation allows them to have access to the existing housing in the community. In quantitative terms, the jobs and housing ratio represents the ratio of the number of jobs to the number of housing units in each area. However, this balance measure does not specifically address the issue of matching housing prices with job salaries. The concept of a balanced community has solid roots in the early years of American planning. The theory is explored by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG, 2001). One portion of their transportation demand management (TDM) plan focuses on balancing the numbers of jobs and housing. The plan points out that unbalanced areas lack the positive side of growth.

The value of the balance ratio empirically ranges from 0.75 to 1.5 compared to the theoretical value of 1 (see, for instance, Cervero, 1989a; ARC, 2002). The following two figures (Figure 23 and Figure 24) describe the definition of the balanced concept in relation to the home-based work trips. Figure 23 explains a theoretical case when outgoing trips of the zone (or area) are equal to the incoming trips from other zones (external zones). Those trips cancel out each other resulting in an optimized use of a road network. Figure 24 shows the other case when the majority of the trips are circulated within the zone or internalized. According to the self-contained concept, all the transportation-related activities, such as the commuting, are contained within the zone.

The next section will point out the most mentioned benefits of implementing the concept of jobs and housing balance as well as the challenging issues.

Jobs and Housing Balance’s Benefits

The idea of a jobs and housing balance as a goal to address increased traffic congestion has been promoted for the past three decades (Cervero, 1989b). These
policies also reflect more general concerns about developing and maintaining communities with an adequate variety of employment opportunities, a sustainable tax
base, and housing mix affordable to a wide range of income levels. These concerns
can be understood as a reaction to the high volume of growth many communities are
facing. In general, there are four advantageous aspects possibly obtained from the implementation of jobs and housing balance policies that are as the following:
reducing traffic congestion and commute time, improving air quality, optimizing
economic and fiscal benefits, and improving quality of life. Each of these aspects
will be discussed in more details below.

Reducing Traffic Congestion and Commute Time

Numbers of studies (Downs, 1992, 2004; Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Inc., Cervero, Howard Stein-Hudson Associates, Inc., & Zupan, 1996) find that an opportunity to live close to the workplace afforded by providing housing close to jobs translates to lower congestion and commute times by eliminating the necessity for long-distance commutes. It also provides increased opportunities to use transit, bike, or walk to work instead of driving. Certainly, placing housing in close proximity to employment is no guarantee that those who live in the housing will
work at the nearby jobs, or vice versa. This would be particularly true for two
income households who split the difference between the locations of their two
employment destinations in choosing where to live (Giuliano, 1995; Levine, 1992).
It does, however, eliminate barriers for those who wish to live close to work, and
reduces needs for long-distance commuting and traffic congestion those people contributing to the road systems especially at peak hours. Frank and Pivo (1994) find travel distances and times tend to be shorter for the commuting in balanced
areas.
Florida’s study uses the 1990 census data to compute the proportion of work
trips which remained within more than 500 cities and town in Florida (ARC, 2002).
The study reports that the share of internal or within-community commutes significantly increased when there is a greater balance between the numbers of local
jobs and the numbers of working residents. A study of Chicago suburbs by Cervero
(1989b) demonstrates that the jobs and housing mismatch leads to longer commutes.

Improving Air Quality

As the need for driving long distances is reduced by providing housing in balance with jobs, so are the resultant emissions associated with driving. The literature on the relationship between auto travel and air pollution is extensive. Most relevant is research done for the Southern California Association of Government’s (SCAG) 1989 Regional Growth Management Plan.

While regional agencies originally took the lead in many of the jobs and housing programs because their role in regulating air quality, the use of regional governments as the primary agent for affecting jobs and housing balance has been
disappointing. Supporters of balancing jobs and housing agree that balance is a
regional issue. However, imbalance is often a result of local land use policy and therefore requires an action of local governments to make those changes necessary to
bring about balance. In addition, regional governments generally do not have regulatory powers necessary to adequately address the issue.

Optimizing Economic and Fiscal Benefits

Since a successful implementation of jobs-housing balance strategies result in less need for long-distance commuting and its associated congestion, fewer public resources are required for traffic congestion mitigation of the regional ransportation.

Ewing and Cervero (2001) explain reduced hours spent in long-distance travel by
commuters translate to lower fuel costs and other automobile-related expenses, lower
costs to employers in terms of reduced employee tardiness and higher productivity,
and eventually lower business trip costs. Furthermore, because the balance between
jobs and housing often refers to the more compact urban form with less urban sprawl,
costs to local government of providing new facilities and services to new development are less because those facilities and services can be provided more
efficiently.

However, another aspect of an economic-benefit argument rests upon a value of commercial growth to the city, in the form of jobs and tax revenues. Employment
growth is an essential element of a healthy community. The more complicated
questions include types, quantities, and locations of the employment growth. Due to the varying values of different types of development, in the senses of both tax
revenue and municipal costs, communities may benefit from encouraging and/or
discouraging certain uses. For instance, zoning areas for more commercial uses may
be a greater fiscal benefit to cities than more residential uses.

Improving Quality of Life

This occurrence requires the combination of all merits of jobs and housing
balance aforementioned. The balance between jobs and housing benefits the local
residents (who should to live and work in the balanced area) in reducing their stress
from commuting and thereby allowing them to gain more leisure time to spend with
their families (SCAG, 2001; VCTC, 2004). For example, the families are affected
when members are under the stress and strain caused by the long commutes. When
both parents have to go to work, longer commutes take away their time from caring
their children or loved ones. This may result in a higher cost of child care expenses
and so on. When living within the community they work in, the opportunity for
more socialization increases because of the time savings and increased sense of
belonging to the community. Balancing numbers of jobs and housing implies the
diversity, compactness, and travel convenience in a geographic sense, therefore the
urban life can then be effectively promoted.

Challenging Issues

As the benefits are listed above, the challenging issues for the jobs and housing balance implementation can be grouped into three aspects: geographic scale, jobs and housing balance measure, and traffic congestion mitigation. Regarding the spatial scale issue, whether jobs and housing balance control is effective at a local
scale. Second, the more complicated consideration is needed beyond the ratio of jobs
to housing. Lastly, if only balancing numbers of jobs and housing can effectively
reduce traffic congestion. Each of these issues will be elaborated in the following
sub-section.

Geographic Scale

Regions are balanced by its definition, as they are identified as economically
self-contained units (Giuliano, 1995; Levine, 1998). Balancing jobs and housing in
sub-regional areas were a challenge that most communities addressing this issue face.
While regional agencies often take leads in prescribing policies, an act of
implementation generally falls to counties and cities (Song, & Knaap, 2004). Since
traffic mostly moves between jurisdictions, and commute sheds are rarely contained
within one jurisdiction, implementing policies on a strictly local level has been
challenged indeed.

Some critics argue that balancing exercised on an individual community may be useless. For instance, Giuliano (1991) argues that balance normally occurs on its
own through the market force, thus imbalance is more a result of incorrectly defining
the study area both spatially and temporally.

Matching Jobs and Housing within a Community

Balance involves more than matching numbers of housing units and numbers of jobs. The adjustment must be made for local conditions, such as household sizes,
percentage of resident workers, and other demographic factors (Downs, 2004).
Balancing appropriate housing opportunities with appropriate jobs complicates the
issue, necessitating the consideration of more difficult matters such as housing prices and wage rates (Sultana, 2000).

Traffic Congestion

Of particular interest is the effect of balance in reducing traffic volume and congestion when this is a common drive of jobs and housing balance policies (Giuliano & Small, 1993). An imposing question is whether jobs and housing balance will ever be an effective tool for addressing the congestion issue. There are
several reasons for having such a question. First, the residential choice may become difficult when there are two household wage earners working in different locations.
Second, the high job-turnover rate reduces the ability to locate with the reference to one’s workplace. Finally, other factors including the access to other amenities,
housing prices, qualities of schools and neighborhoods impact the relocation decision
as well. Many suggest jobs and housing balance needs to be used in combination with other measures, such as the transportation demand management programs (TDM programs) to be an effective means of traffic congestion mitigation.

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