Correlations of urban sprawl with transport patterns and socioeconomics of university students in Cracow, Poland

Urban sprawl is considered as a western urban development pattern, which is common in different cities around the world. Although, a large number of studies have focused on urban sprawl, modelling urban sprawl has been less emphasised, especially in various geographical contexts. This study aims to investigate urban sprawl and its determinants in a post-socialist country and model urban sprawl based on disaggregated data. In addition, the correlations of urban sprawl with travel patterns were examined, along with the socioeconomic characteristics of university students in Cracow, Poland by applying the Weighted Least Square (WLS) regression model. The WLS regression model was fitted based on the data from 1,288 online questionnaires targeting university students. Furthermore, urban sprawl around the home and the university for each student who indicated the nearest intersection to their home and university were separately estimated by employing the Shannon entropy. Based on the findings, urban sprawl around homes was correlated with 14 transport patterns and socioeconomic features such as gender, age, driving license, financial dependency status, gross monthly income, number of commute trips, mode of transportation for commuting, number of trips for shopping or entertainment, daily shopping area, mode choice for shopping and entertainment trips inside and outside the neighbourhoods, frequency of public transport use, the attractiveness of shops inside the neighbourhoods, and the length of time living in the current home. Additionally, urban sprawl around the university was significantly correlated with age, car ownership, number of commute trips, and a sense of belonging to neighbourhoods, entertainment place, and residential location choice. Finally, a positive correlation was reported between urban sprawl with higher income, elderly student, financial dependent students, and car dependency trips, while urban sprawl was negatively related to the use of public transit.