Modeling Social Impacts of Urban Highways

The variety of roles played by an urban dweller, and the fact that such roles are often played at different points in geographical space, render it likely that social impacts of an urban highway project are not all confined within a narrow transportation corridor. Residential relocation in particular may affect widespread portions of an urban area. Social status considerations are important factors in location decisions by highway relocatees and other homeseekers. A residential location model based on social status is presented and tested against census data for the Toledo, Ohio SMSA. The model is then applied to a set of three hypothetical freeway locations to show the change in the geographical distributions of various social indicators, including total population, non-white populations, and housing vacancies. It is concluded that the proposed model provides a useful tool for quantitative study of social impacts outside a transportation corridor.