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RésuméLe vieillissement démographique est un des défis majeurs du 21e siècle. Il pose directement la question du « vieillissement en santé », un processus aidant les personnes âgées à rester en bonne santé et indépendantes le plus longtemps possible. L’influence des facteurs environnementaux sur ce processus peut varier selon les individus et leurs comportements. L’enchevêtrement de ces facteurs représente un défi autant théorique que méthodologique. Cet article a pour objectifs i) de quantifier les associations entre l’environnement physique et social du quartier des personnes âgées et leur vieillissement en santé et ii) d’examiner si leur activité physique et leur participation sociale jouent un rôle de médiation dans ces associations. Si certaines caractéristiques du quartier relatives à la réputation, l’accès aux services, et la cohésion sociale sont associées au vieillissement en santé, il existe un soutien limité à l’idée que les comportements tiennent un rôle d’intermédiaire dans cette relation.

While attention has been paid to travel satisfaction studies during the last decade, less research has investigated the relationship between the influence of a sense of place – and more particularly the psycho-environmental concepts of workplace attachment and workplace satisfaction – and commuting satisfaction. Using a retrospective survey, this paper focuses on the relocation of a workplace within the city of Montreal (Canada); the McGill University Healthcare Centre. It examines the motivations and barriers involved in the evolution of commuting characteristics, using the theoretical framework of mobility biographies. The empirical analysis includes a large dataset of independent variables, applying a multinomial logistic model in order to explain the transition of the employees’ commuting satisfaction. With regard to the measurement of change in commuting satisfaction, the findings confirm the role of attitudes, while taking into account the contextual differences before and after relocation. The change in travel time is found to be an important factor in the evolution of commuter satisfaction, whereby reduced commuting time improves satisfaction, as expected. In addition, the more an employee is attached to the new workplace, the more the commuting satisfaction will increase. The results provide further evidence that the meaning of the workplace goes beyond a location or a space, and opens up new avenues for research in travel behavior.

Since most research on economic metropolisation has until now concentrated on "high added value" workers on both sides of the border, little place is left for analysis either of the less valued categories in the process of metropolisation, or of the diversity of jobs within the regional labour markets. What, then, is the position of less favoured social categories in the evolution of cross-border metropolises over the last decades, when compared with managers or other liberal professions? To answer this question, a case study is carried out here on the cross-border commuters in the Lorraine Region (France), who participate in great numbers in the metropolisation of Luxembourg, by comparing them to those who work in France. The objective of this article is to give an account of the spatiotemporal evolution of the principal social classes among the cross-border commuters, based on the French population censuses. These databases, from 1968 to the present day, are comparable both in the time and space. The results confirm that a cross-border metropolis of Luxembourg has been formed, notably since the 1990s, by a substantial increase of highly qualified cross-border commuters, as well as by an augmentation of the less qualified workforce during this period: thus, in the Region of Lorraine, even in 2013, the share of the cross-border working class (commuting to Luxembourg) remains greater than that of the working class within France. Moreover, complex links exist in the phenomenon of metropolisation between historical social segregations and specifically metropolitan segregations in terms of the socio-spatial organisation of the territory in question: for example, the secondary urban centres of the French metropolitan area, such as Thionville or Metz, serve as a residential reservoir for the most highly qualified cross-border commuters, especially when this type of workforce has already been observed in these agglomerations in the past. Primary results point to the need to learn more about the conditions of different residential trajectories, as well as about the social status of different workforces on each side of the border. La majorité des recherches sur la métropolisation économique s’étant jusqu’alors concentrée sur les actifs « à forte valeur ajoutée » de part et d’autre des frontières, peu de place est laissée à l’analyse des catégories que le processus de métropolisation valorise moins et à la diversité des emplois au sein des marchés régionaux de main-d’œuvre. Or que ce soit par rapport aux cadres ou autres professions libérales, quelle est la place des catégories moins favorisées dans l’évolution de la métropolisation transfrontalière durant les dernières décennies ? Pour y répondre, nous étudions le cas des frontaliers de Lorraine qui participent massivement à la métropolisation de Luxembourg, tout en les comparant aux autres actifs lorrains travaillant en France. L’objectif de cet article est ainsi de rendre compte de l’évolution spatio-temporelle de ces principales classes sociales à partir des recensements français de population, depuis 1968 jusqu’à nos jours, ces bases de données étant à la fois comparables dans le temps et dans l’espace. Les résultats confirment une métropolisation transfrontalière luxembourgeoise, notamment depuis les années 1990, par l’augmentation substantielle de frontaliers qualifiés, tout en laissant également les classes moins qualifiées croître durant cette période : ainsi, la part des ouvriers lorrains travaillant au Luxembourg reste plus forte que celle des ouvriers lorrains non-frontaliers, encore en 2013. Par ailleurs, il existe des liens complexes entre les ségrégations sociales antérieures au phénomène de métropolisation et les ségrégations spécifiquement métropolitaines au niveau de l’organisation socio-spatiale du territoire considéré : par exemple, les centres urbains secondaires de l’aire métropolitaine française, comme Thionville ou Metz, ont un rôle de réservoir résidentiel des frontaliers les plus qualifiés surtout si par le passé ces agglomérations connaissaient déjà la présence de ce type de population active. Ces premiers résultats supposent à la fois de se pencher davantage sur la compréhension des conditions de ces trajectoires résidentielles, de même que sur les conditions sociales de l’activité professionnelle d’un côté comme de l’autre de la frontière.

Daily mobility has been shown to contribute to the wellbeing of older adults, as it promotes healthy and independent living. However, very little is known about how the complex relationships between locations, geographic environments and daily mobility relate to wellbeing. In the current paper, we rely on the concept of ‘motility’– defined as potential mobility– and the concept of ‘movement’– defined as actual mobility– to take a step forwards in disentangling the relationship between mobility and wellbeing. We further examine how both motility and movement relate to two complementary definitions of wellbeing: hedonic wellbeing as a measurement of happiness, and eudaimonic wellbeing as the actualisation of an individual’s human potential. To investigate this relationship, we draw up a conceptual framework stressing pathways linking mobility to wellbeing, which we empirically test using structural equation modelling on a stratified sample of 470 older adults. We first quantitatively confirm that motility is defined by access, competences, appropriation and attitudes to modes of transportation. We then observe that motility has direct effects on eudaimonic wellbeing and, to a lesser extent, on hedonic wellbeing. Part of the motility effects on wellbeing are mediated by movement. Separating mobility into motility and movement stresses the independent and complementary role that potential and realised mobility play in shaping older adults’ wellbeing.

Introduction Promoting active transport offers the potential to increase population physical activity levels. Compensation theories state that above-average physical activity in one activity is compensated in later activities; a mechanism that results in stable levels of total physical activity. Little is known about possible compensation of transport physical activity among older adults. Methods GPS (Global Positioning System) and accelerometer data collected among older adults (65+) were pooled from four cohorts in Canada, Luxembourg, and France (n=636, collected between 2012 and 2016). Physical activity was measured as total volume of physical activity for trips and non-trip activities. Robust linear regressions on person-centered data were used to test within-person associations between transport and total physical activity. Results 636 older adults – median age of 76 years, 49% women - provided accelerometer and GPS data for at least 4 days. 18% of the total volume of physical activity was related to transport. A positive association was found between physical activity during a trip and the physical activity during the next hour, among those with lower levels of regular physical activity. Negative associations - indicating partial compensation - were found between transport physical activity during a day, and both total physical activity during the next day and non-transport physical activity during the same day. No differences were found between the four study cohorts. Conclusions Transport physical activity is compensated partially by older adults during non-transport physical activity. Given the presence of compensation, we strongly recommend evaluations of transport interventions to measure and analyze both non-transport and transport physical activity.

Interest is growing in neighborhood effects on health beyond individual's home locations. However, few studies accounted for selective daily mobility bias. Selective mobility of 470 older adults (aged 67-94) living in urban and suburban areas of Luxembourg, was measured through detour percentage between their observed GPS-based paths and their shortest paths. Multilevel negative binomial regression tested associations between detour percentage, trips characteristics and environmental exposures. Detour percentage was higher for walking trips (28%) than car trips (16%). Low-speed areas and connectivity differences between observed and shortest paths vary by transport mode, indicating a potential selective daily mobility bias. The positive effects of amenities, street connectivity, low-speed areas and greenness on walking detour reinforce the existing evidence on older adults' active transportation. Urban planning interventions favoring active transportation will also promote walking trips with longer detours, helping older adults to increase their physical activity levels and ultimately promote healthy aging.

Understanding how, where, and when a city is expanding can inform better ways to make our cities more resilient, sustainable, and equitable. This paper explores urban volumetry using the Building 3D Density Index (B3DI) in 2001, 2010, 2019, and quantifies changes in the volume of buildings and urban expansion in Luxembourg City over the last two decades. For this purpose, we use airborne laser scanning (ALS) point cloud (2019) and geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) of aerial orthophotos (2001, 2010) to extract 3D models, footprints of buildings and calculate the volume of individual buildings and B3DI in the frame of a 100 × 100 m grid, at the level of parcels, districts, and city scale. Findings indicate that the B3DI has notably increased in the past 20 years from 0.77 m3/m2 (2001) to 0.9 m3/m2 (2010) to 1.09 m3/m2 (2019). Further, the increase in the volume of buildings between 2001–2019 was +16 million m3. The general trend of changes in the cubic capacity of buildings per resident shows a decrease from 522 m3/resident in 2001, to 460 m3/resident in 2019, which, with the simultaneous appearance of new buildings and fast population growth, represents the dynamic development of the city.

This paper focuses on a particular form of high mobility, namely the long journeys to work generated by cross-border job market. More precisely, it studies the impact of such behaviors on well-being by analyzing the relationships between mode choice, transport-related attitudes, socio-demographic and spatial attributes, and the level of satisfaction in the context of cross-border long commutes to Luxembourg. The statistical modelling is rooted to a conceptual framework that emphasizes the mutual dependencies between attitudes, mode choice, and satisfaction. Based on a survey among long-distance commuters (N = 3093) held in 2010 and 2011, two ordered logistic regressions, one of which including latent constructs of transport-related attitudes derived from a structural equation modelling, are developed to explain satisfaction in commuting. Main findings are: (1) Travel-related attitudes influence satisfaction with travel more than socio-demographic attributes, (2) public transport users are globally more satisfied in commuting than car drivers, (3) the socio-economic model of satisfaction is plagued by omitted variables issues, (4) the attitude model of satisfaction drops all but one socio-economic attributes (education remains) while improving adjustment (Pseudo-R-squared = 0.57 versus 0.09, BIC = 2953 versus 6059) and avoiding omitted variables bias. The effect of attitudes and other latent constructs is of paramount importance, even concealing most socio-demographic attributes to assess satisfaction. The conclusion is devoted to a discussion on the sustainability of these cross-border long commutes from the individual, social, and environmental points of view.

International audience

Confronted with negative environmental impacts, rising fuel costs and increasing congestion, many cities are implementing sustainable mobility measures to improve the flow of passenger and goods. Examples of these measures are use of public transport, cycling, walking, energy efficient vehicles, biofuels. The challenge before transport decision makers is which one(s) to choose for implementation as often there is no or limited quantitative data available on the subject. Moreover, the context of each city, its geographic and transport conditions restrict the generalization of results obtained in experienced cities. In this paper, we are investigating application of ideal solution based multicriteria decision making (MCDM) techniques namely fuzzy TOPSIS, fuzzy VIKOR, and fuzzy GRA for sustainability evaluation of urban mobility projects. A real application for city of Luxembourg is provided. Three projects are evaluated namely implementation of a new tramway in the city center of Luxembourg, re-organization of existing bus lines in the city to perform optimized service, and implementation of electric vehicle car-sharing stations in the city. Sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the influence of input parameters on modeling results. The proposed work is one of the first few works to investigate application of ideal-solution based multicriteria decision making techniques for sustainability evaluation of urban mobility projects under uncertainty. Besides, the best alternative is selected using veto thereby overcoming the limitations of single MCDM methods.

One of the determinants of travel satisfaction is ‘dissonance’, or the difference between someone’s actual travel and their preferred or ideal travel. Previous studies never questioned the use of ideal travel as a reference point to assess travel satisfaction. We assess how and to what extent changes in commute dissonance, among other determinants, affect commute satisfaction by applying the prospect theory with alternative reference points. Results indicate that negative dissonant commuters (i.e., actual commute time > ideal) are significantly less satisfied with their commute, but the opposite does not hold. By using data from a retrospective survey among staff of the relocated McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, Canada, we found how the reference point of the previous commute time is more salient and impactful. This study provides evidence for policy makers about the positive effects of transit oriented developments in terms of increased levels of commute satisfaction.

International audience; This article uses structural equation models (SEM) as a data-mining tool to unravel the endogenous relationships among attitudinal measurements, satisfaction and the perceived utility within the theory of planned behaviour. Based on a mobility survey among Luxembourg cross-border workers, this experiment yields a critical view about the specification of measurement indicators to be used for the survey of attitudes and beliefs and to test SEM as an exploration and data-mining tool. The findings show that: the impact of attitudes on mode choice is mediated by self-reported satisfaction with commuting. Furthermore, using SEM with semantic differentials is efficient to estimate attitudes about transport modes in complement of Likert scales used for beliefs.

It is argued in the life-oriented approach that travel behavior affects life choice and vice versa with resulting impacts on quality of life (QOL). By deepening the analysis of interdependences between daily mobility and life event (relocation) and their relationships with QOL, this article focuses on two challenges. It aims at analyzing how these life events first, encourage travel behavior changes, especially mode choice, and second, improve or decrease people’s QOL. By radically changing living context and built environment, relocation also affects routine and satisfaction. These relationships are investigated in the Luxembourg cross-border area, where great differences related to real estate price encourage residential moves from Luxembourg to neighboring countries, while the general decline in public transport efficiency at the border may support car use. We use both mixed and ordered logit models. The first one investigates whether individuals’ life-stage changes and residential relocation are significant regarding their mode choice decision. The second estimates individuals’ global QOL and the roles of complementary factors (changing housing conditions, built environment, subjective satisfaction, travel time and socio-economic characteristics). The analysis reveals several results. The effect of the different factors is consistent with travel mode choice literature despite the specific cross-border context. Nevertheless, relocation, mainly oriented towards a cross-border suburbanization, significantly increases the probability of using the car for daily activities. These trips and especially the journeys to work are the least satisfactory aspects of daily life after relocation but does not affect the general level of QOL. At the opposite, the better housing conditions after relocation have positive effect on the QOL. From a policy perspective, this life-oriented approach in cross-border context confirms the influence of life events on QOL while it demonstrates a higher importance of housing conditions than spatial constraints on relocation and satisfaction.

International audience

Background Policymakers need accurate data to develop efficient interventions to promote transport physical activity. Given the imprecise assessment of physical activity in trips, our aim was to illustrate novel advances in the measurement of walking in trips, including in trips incorporating non-walking modes. Methods We used data of 285 participants (RECORD MultiSensor Study, 2013–2015, Paris region) who carried GPS receivers and accelerometers over 7 days and underwent a phone-administered web mobility survey on the basis of algorithm-processed GPS data. With this mobility survey, we decomposed trips into unimodal trip stages with their start/end times, validated information on travel modes, and manually complemented and cleaned GPS tracks. This strategy enabled to quantify walking in trips with different modes with two alternative metrics: distance walked and accelerometry-derived number of steps taken. Results Compared with GPS-based mobility survey data, algorithm-only processed GPS data indicated that the median distance covered by participants per day was 25.3 km (rather than 23.4 km); correctly identified transport time vs. time at visited places in 72.7% of time; and correctly identified the transport mode in 67% of time (and only in 55% of time for public transport). The 285 participants provided data for 8983 trips (21,163 segments of observation). Participants spent a median of 7.0% of their total time in trips. The median distance walked per trip was 0.40 km for entirely walked trips and 0.85 km for public transport trips (the median number of accelerometer steps were 425 and 1352 in the corresponding trips). Overall, 33.8% of the total distance walked in trips and 37.3% of the accelerometer steps in trips were accumulated during public transport trips. Residents of the far suburbs cumulated a 1.7 times lower distance walked per day and a 1.6 times lower number of steps during trips per 8 h of wear time than residents of the Paris core city. Conclusions Our approach complementing GPS and accelerometer tracking with a GPS-based mobility survey substantially improved transport mode detection. Our findings suggest that promoting public transport use should be one of the cornerstones of policies to promote physical activity.

Numerous studies have found that travel mode choice is related to mode-specific attitudes as well as travel-related satisfaction. While choosing a travel mode that is congruent with attitudes towards that mode (i.e., consonance) brings about travel satisfaction, travel-related satisfaction can result in the choice of a travel mode which is not necessarily consistent with (all) attitudes (i.e., dissonance). However, few studies have analyzed the extent to which consonance and dissonance affect or are affected by the overall travel-related satisfaction. This paper aims at understanding whether respondents with a positive attitude towards a certain mode will actually use the mode, and whether consonant travelers are more satisfied with their trips and travel-related situations compared to their dissonant counterparts. Additionally, research in this area is dominated by the use of quantitative methods, leading to a lack of understanding of the complexity of subjective factors such as attitudes and values. In this study, with a retrospective mixed method approach, 1977 (in the quantitative section) and 19 (in the qualitative section) employees who have experienced an involuntary relocation of their workplace have been examined vis-&agrave, vis their travel-related values and attitudes, corresponding choices, and satisfaction. Results from our quantitative analyses indicate that first, the relocation of the workplace was associated with increased public transit use and travel satisfaction, and second, surprisingly, the share of dissonant active mode users was relatively high compared to other modes (except bus). Our qualitative analyses revealed that individuals do not necessarily use the most positively valued travel mode due to lack of accessibility and competences, but also due to having preferences for other travel-related elements such as travel route. Furthermore, travel mode consonance (or dissonance) and travel satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) are not necessarily positively related because (i) individuals attribute different weights to their travel-related attitudes and values, and (ii) satisfaction in other life domains can make a travel dissatisfaction bearable or even favorable.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2010 the transport sector was responsible for 23% of the total energy-related CO2 emissions (6.7 GtCO2) worldwide. Policy makers in Luxembourg are well-aware of the challenges and are setting ambitious objectives at country level for the mid and long term. However, a framework to assess environmental impacts from a life cycle perspective on the scale of transport policy scenarios, rather than individual vehicles, is lacking. We present a novel framework linking activity-based modeling with life cycle assessment (LCA) and a proof-of-concept case study for the French cross-border commuters working in Luxembourg. Our framework allows for the evaluation of specific policies formulated on the trip level as well as aggregated evaluation of environmental impacts from a life cycle perspective. The results of our proof-of-concept-based case study suggest that only a combination of: (1) policy measures improving the speed and coverage of the public transport system, (2) policy measures fostering electric mobility, and (3) external factors such as de-carbonizing the electricity mix will allow to counteract the expected increase in impacts due to the increase of mobility needs of the growing commuting population in the long term.

For several decades, changes in travel behavior have been at the heart of transportation research, either to adapt the supply of transportation or to better understand the evolution of travel demand [...]

The number of cross-border workers in Luxembourg has steadily increased over the last 30 years. In the collective imagination these cross-border workers come to the Grand Duchy just to work. This paper challenges this representation by measuring the functional integration of cross-border workers in Luxembourg. Using some useful tools linked to the field of Time Geography, it is possible to analyze their activity spaces according to the spatial and temporal organization of their daily activities and trip chains. The spatial distribution and organization of their activities on both sides of the border provide the methodological and analytical support for the findings presented in this paper. The juxtaposition of trip chains with activity spaces allows the identification and characterization of the degree of functional integration of cross-border workers in Luxembourg. Moreover, based on a quantitative survey conducted in three different countries, our results show there are five types of cross-border worker profiles in terms of the degree of integration: commuter-only, home-centered, dispersed, hybrid, and functionally integrated.

International audience; PurposeUnderstanding the geographical and environmental triggers for active transport among older adults is crucial to promote healthy and independent lifestyles. While transportation research has long considered trip purpose as a major determinant of transport mode choices, “place and health” research has paid little attention to it, and even less in connection with environmental determinants. To avoid an oversimplification of how neighborhood built environments influence utilitarian walking, it is critical to account simultaneously for trip purposes, the locations of visited places, and the related exposure to surrounding environments.MethodsBased on a cohort of 471 older adults in Luxembourg, this study examines the influence of trip purposes on utilitarian walking, and the potential interaction effects with characteristics of multiple geographic environments and distance to the place of residence. Information related to demographics, health status, and regularly visited destinations was collected in 2015 and 2016. Associations between trip purpose, environment, distance, and walking were analyzed using multilevel logistic regressions, accounting for demographics, neighborhood self-selection, and health status.ResultsAfter accounting for environmental attributes, distance, and confounding factors, trip purpose remained a strong correlate of walking among older adults. Associations between distance and walking strongly differed by trip purpose (Wald Chi2 test p

The increasing attractiveness of Luxembourg as a place to work and live puts its land use and transport systems under high pressure. Understanding how the country can accommodate residential growth and additional traffic in a sustainable manner is a key and difficult challenge that requires a policy relevant, flexible and responsive modelling framework. We describe the first fully-fletched land use and transport interaction framework (MOEBIUS) applied to the whole of Luxembourg. We stress its multi-scalar nature and detail the articulation of two of its main components: a dynamic demographic microsimulation at the scale of individuals and a micro-spatial scale simulation of residential choice. Conversely to traditional zone-based approaches, the framework keeps full details of households and individuals for residential and travel mode choice, making the model highly consistent with theory. In addition, results and policy constraints are implemented at a very fine resolution (20m) and can thus incorporate local effects (residential externalities, local urban design). Conversely to fully disaggregated approaches, a linkage is organized at an intermediate scale, which allows (i) to simplify the generation and spatial distribution of trips, (ii) to parallelise parts of the residential choice simulation, and (iii) to ensure a good calibration of the population and real estate market estimates. We show model outputs for different scenarios at the horizon 2030 and compare them along sustainability criteria.