Discussion of "The Role of Employment Subcenters in Residential Location Decisions"

Abstract

In this paper we employ Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, a polycentric city with 10 employment subcenters, as a case study to explore the role of employment subcenters in determining residential location decisions. We estimate discrete choice models of residential location decisions: conditional logit models and heteroscedastic logit models with both the full choice set and sampled choices. We nd that access to certain employment subcenters, measured in terms of generalized cost, is an important determinant of households’ residential location decisions. e proximity to specic employment subcenters varies across households with different income levels. ese patterns can be explained by existing land use and trans- portation patterns, as well as by subcenters’ economic specialization.