Understanding the interface between local housing markets and education markets: children's travel to school

孩子们上学的旅程象征着城市社会中存在的一些基本紧张关系。家长重视孩子的教育选择和申请其他社区学校的自由。然而，与此同时，房主也很欣赏附近有一所好的社区学校所带来的价值。其结果是，在许多城市，每天上学的旅程形成了一个复杂的网络，加剧了交通拥堵、环境恶化和健康问题。据估计，仅在谢菲尔德，由于没有去最近的学校，孩子们每天要多走14.5万公里，每年多排放约1400吨二氧化碳。开车接送学生的人数达到了历史最高水平，这让公共卫生专业人士担心在校学生中肥胖症的流行。在旨在改善教育选择的政策与旨在减少交通拥堵或减少出行需求的政策之间，显然存在着微妙的平衡。当代自住住房市场在这方面发挥了关键作用：进入好学校越来越多地推动当地住房市场，并导致城市不同地区之间的房价差异显著。然而，如果上学的需求最小化，每个孩子都去最近的学校，这将放大住房市场在教育成果中的作用，导致“抵押选择学校”的情况，这对低收入家庭来说是不公平的。与其他城市一样，谢菲尔德的地方规划者和教育官员正面临着两难境地，住房和交通政策与学校选择计划的影响相互影响，导致学校出行和距离的增加。为了解决这一困境，他们需要对出行行为进行分析，认识到学校、社区和住房之间关系的复杂性，以及不同地理尺度（社区层面和整个城市）的出行需求。传统模型向政策制定者提供了许多孤立的、单一地理范围内的这些因素，但很难将它们全部加在一起，以确定最佳政策：一种以公平的方式平衡教育和环境结果的政策。该项目将分析学生的家庭住址、上学地点以及上学方式等匿名数据。通过这样做，一个能够同时考虑社区、住房市场和学校选择特征的模型将被构建。该模型将成为一个工具包的核心，分析人士可以使用该工具包来估计城市住房规划和教育政策变化对上学的影响。这将使地方决策者能够客观评估不同住房市场和学校特点对上学的影响，从而设计出对每个人都更公平的住房和教育政策，同时保护环境和减少拥堵。

The journeys that children make to school symbolise some of the fundamental tensions that exist in urban societies. Parents value choice in their children's education and the freedom to apply to schools in other neighbourhoods. At the same time, however, homeowners also appreciate the value that comes from having a good neighbourhood school near to them. The result in many cities is a complex web of daily journeys to school adding to congestion, environmental degradation and health problems. In Sheffield alone, it is estimated that children travel over 145,000 extra kilometres every day as a result of not going to the nearest school, producing something like 1,400 tons of extra CO2 a year. Levels of car use for the school run are at an all time high, causing public health professionals to worry about an obesity epidemic among school children.There is clearly a delicate balance between policies aimed at improving educational choice and those aimed at reducing congestion or reducing the need to travel. The contemporary market for owner-occupied housing has a key role in this: access to good schools is something that increasingly drives the local housing market and causes significant house price differences between different parts of the city. Yet if demand for travel to school was minimised and every child went to his or her nearest school, that would amplify the housing market's role in educational outcomes, leading to a situation of school 'choice by mortgage' which is unfair for families on lower incomes.Local planners and education officials in Sheffield, as in other cities, are faced with a dilemma as the impacts of housing and transport policy and school choice programmes pull against each other by leading to increases in school trips and distance. To address this dilemma they need an analysis of travel behaviour that recognises the complexity of the relationship between schools, neighbourhoods and housing, and the demand for travel at a variety of geographic scales (at the neighbourhood level and also across the city). Traditional models tell policymakers a lot about many of these factors in isolation and at a single geographic scale, but it is difficult to add them all together to determine the best policy: one that balances educational and environmental outcomes in a fair way.This project will analyse anonymous data on pupils' home addresses, where they go to school, and how they get there. By doing so, a model that is able to look simultaneously at characteristics of the neighbourhood, the housing market, and school choice will be constructed. This model will sit at the centre of a toolkit that can be used by analysts to estimate the travel-to-school implications of changes to housing planning and education policies in the city. This will allow local policymakers to make an objective assessment of the impact of different housing market and school characteristics on travel to school and therefore design housing and access to education policies that are fairer for everybody while protecting the environment and reducing congestion.