Randall Crane at UTM

Randall Crane Lecture at the University of Toronto at Mississauga
2 February 2007

Sex, Lies, and Commuting in the U.S., 1985-2005

Gender is both an archetypal and adaptive dimension of the urban condition, and thus remains a moving target for planning practitioners and scholars alike - except perhaps in transportation planning, where women's shorter commutes are considered a fixture. Yet it is also clear this net outcome reflects tradeoffs among a number of shifting forces. Acting to offset women's enduring disproportionate share of home- and child-oriented responsibilities, for example, are rising female licensing and labor force participation rates, changing occupational patterns, and substantial differences in family structures, job access, and mode choice by age, income, and race. Indeed, recent studies report that work trips were the same by sex in duration in San Francisco and in distance in Quebec City for many demographic subgroups. Is convergence a larger trend and how do the details matter? This lecture looked at newly available individual-level data to provide the clearest answer to date for the US over 1985-2005.

The following photos are of a selection of slides from Randy's presentation. Selection was based on whether I thought they might eventually be useful for my CIP, and whether or not I was getting more little sandwiches from the buffet. Taken from a distance with the zoom setting and dodging people's heads and Danielle's waterglass, these are not the most attractive photos you'll ever see, but are at least legible, especially if you view the photos full size by clicking on the icon twice (in Firefox) or on the icon in the lower right corner (in IE).

Suburbia in Mexico