Selima Sultana

Dr. Sultana’s research couples the insights of Urban and Transportation Geography with quantitative methodologies and GIS, allowing the use of a wide range of spatial data and scales. Very specifically, she is interested in the travel behavior of individuals and households in their urban environments, focusing on how people negotiate the conflicting demands of household responsibilities and the changing urban setting of their lives. She has investigated the degree to which commuting flows are the result of inefficiencies in matching jobs to housing, in addition to the spatial structure of city, the contemporary processes of urban-economic restructuring and resulting social changes, and the role of dual-earner households in commuting and residential location decisions. The results of her work have already been published in leading geographic journals such as The Professional Geographer, Urban Geography, Journal of Transport Geography, and the Southeastern Geographer. Her research has been supported by the University Transportation Center of Alabama, Center for Sustainability at Auburn University, and University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her ongoing work is examining: • The influences of Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) related changes on society and households, such as simultaneous impacts on (and interrelationships between) travel behavior and urban spatial structure. • Extending work on commuting to examine the effects of low density urban development in public school transportation and the resulting impacts on household travel patterns and children’s time budget. • Examining changed household commuting patterns due to urban sprawl, and particularly the relationships between sprawl and jobs/housing balance and spatial mismatch issues. • Exploring the level of accessibility of Greensboro residents to various activity places (e.g., jobs and shopping centers) by bike lanes, and determining how accessibility varies according to neighborhood structure (e.g., density and mixed-land uses) and population composition (e.g., income and race).

There are 39 included publications by Selima Sultana :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
The Civil Rights Movement and the Future of the National Park System in a Racially Diverse America 2012 4933 The U.S. National Park System contains places of world-renowned beauty and tremendous historical significance that represent some of the central values and experiences in American culture, democracy, and freedom for everyone, for all time. However, t...
Commuting Constraints of Black Female Workers in Atlanta: An Examination of Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis in Married–couple Dual–earner Households 2003 1047 Using 5% Public-Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) for 1990, this paper examines the extent of racial variation in females' commuting times in the Atlanta metropolitan area in the context of the spatial mismatch hypothesis. Much past research has portrayed...
Edge Cities in the Era of Megaprojects 2011 3187 At the beginning of the 20th century almost all of America’s office space was clustered in downtowns of cities and towns, but this trend has changed since the freeway construction era after World War II. The freeway era facilitated rapid suburbanizat...
Effects of Married-Couple Dual-Earner Households on Metropolitan Commuting: Evidence from the Atlanta Metropolitan Area 2005 1654 The idea of creating a balance between jobs and housing within different commuter catchment areas of a metropolis has been a prominent approach for reducing traffic congestion, air pollution, and journey-to-work times. Married-couple, dual-earner hou...
Enhancing Trip Distribution Using Twitter Data: Comparison of Gravity and Neural Networks 2018 1226 Predicting human mobility within cities is an important task in urban and transportation planning. With the vast amount of digital traces available through social media platforms, we investigate the potential application of such data in predicting co...
Factors Associate with Students’ Parking-Pass Decisions: Evidence from an American University 2015 248 The primary objective of this research is to provide an in-depth understanding about factors affecting university students' parking-pass purchase decisions by integrating concepts and variables developed in various disciplines. A sample of 2253 under...
A Geographic Assessment of High-speed rail stations on urban development: the implications from the Korea Train eXpress (KTX) 2018 543 As part of the balanced-development strategy, the Korean high-speed rail system-Korean Train eXpress (KTX)-is expected to serve not only as the next-generation intercity transit system, but also to have effects on regional development. With increased...
Geographical Assessment of Low-Carbon Transportation Modes: A Case Study from a Commuter University 2018 1008 This case study examines the geographic variation in students’ low-carbon transportation (LCT) modes to a commuter university campus. Three major goals are accomplished from this research: (1) identifying commuting zones for the bicycling, walking, a...
GIS: Geographic Information Systems for the Social Sciences: Investigating Space and Place, by Stevens J. Steinberg and Shiela L. Steinberg. Sage Publications, 2006 [Review] 2007 681 The closing decades of the twentieth century witnessed tremendous growth in the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology in various spatial disciplines. Many social science researchers and practitioners have started realizing th...
Grameen Bank’s Housing Program for Rural Poor in Bangladesh: A Case Study 2004 1154 Even though access to affordable housing is a basic requirement for human well-being, the majority of people in most developing nations occupy the most rudimentary forms of shelter. As a developing nation, Bangladesh is no exception to this rule. The...
Hispanic Immigrant Clusters and the Local Labor Market: Preliminary Evidence from North Carolina 2005 801 Over the past decade the Hispanic population has been the fastest growing race/ethnic group in the United States. North Carolina is one state that has experienced a Hispanic population boom. However, this growth is not evenly distributed throughout t...
Household Energy Expenditures in North Carolina: A Geographically Weighted Regression Approach 2018 1006 [2017-2018 UNCG University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund Grant Winner.] The U.S. household (HH) energy consumption is responsible for approximately 20% of annual global GHG emissions. Identifying the key factors influencing HH energy consumpt...
Impact of Urban Sprawl on Travel Behaviors and Local Watersheds in the Auburn–Opelika Metropolitan Area: A Case Study on a Small MSA 2003 315 Urban sprawl bas been a major policy issue for some time in academia as well as in American politics because it has a significant impact on environmental characteristics of urban areas. Among others, it consumes large amounts of agricultural and fore...
The impacts of high-speed rail extensions on accessibility and spatial equity changes in South Korea from 2004 to 2018 2015 2320 The construction of South Korean High-Speed Rail (HSR) or Korea Train eXpress (KTX) has been evolving in phases since its first operation in 2004. This development raises concerns whether the benefits from the extended HSR network would again be limi...
Intra–Regional Variations of Commuting Times in a Decentralized Urban Area 2002 240 A lively policy debate, the effect on travel time of the decentralization of employment, has emerged as decentralization of the urban form becomes more evident over time. Researchers have argued that greater centrality leads to higher commuting costs...
Jobs–Housing Imbalance and Commuting in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area: Exploration of Causes of Longer Commuting 2002 310 Commuting is the major source of congestion and air pollution in the United States. For almost a decade, urban policy-makers have been concerned about the geographical balance between locations of jobs and housing as a strategy for reducing traffic c...
Journey–to–Work Patterns in the Age of Sprawl: Evidence from Two Mid–Size Southern Metropolitan Areas 2007 1330 Among others, one commonly identified negative consequence of urban sprawl is an increase in the length of the journey to work. However, there has been more discussion of this than serious scrutiny, hence the relationship between urban sprawl and com...
Land Suitability Evaluation for Organic Agriculture of Wheat Using GIS and Multi-Criteria Analysis 2018 2636 Despite the growing interest in organic farming, its practice remains limited because of its lower productivity relative to conventional farming. Land suitability evaluation for organic crops can potentially improve productivity, and thus the economi...
The Nature of Urban Growth and the Commuting Transition: Endless Sprawl or a Growth Wave? 2014 3391 The concept of an urban growth wave expanding outwards is used to examine the commuting characteristics of residents of recently developed housing areas within the 50 largest US metropolitan areas at multiple points of time between 1980 and 2000. The...
Planning the Good Community: the New Urbanism in Theory and Practice (Review) 2009 3882 A review of the book “Planning the Good Community: the New Urbanism in Theory and Practice” by Jill Grant.
Quantifying Urban Encroachment in Dhaka, Bangladesh from 1989–2000 2004 330 Even though accelerating urban growth has often been viewed as a sign of vitality for regional economies, such urban growth, unquestionably, causes tremendous changes in land use and leads to severe haphazard and unplanned growth in urban areas, whic...
Race, Employment Sprawl and the Journey to Work in Birmingham, Alabama 2008 1701 Studies of residential sprawl have shown that longer commutes are typical for residents of these areas, but the effect of sprawling workplace locations on journey to work patterns has not yet been closely examined. This paper uses commuting data from...
Racial Variations in Males' Commuting Times in Atlanta: What Does the Evidence Suggest? 2005 865 Using a sample from the comparatively most privileged group of black males, those married and living with a working spouse, this article investigates how race-based residential locations and the spatial structure of labor markets affect commuting exp...
The Relationship between Pedestrian Deaths and Metropolitan Areas with High Density Vehicle Use 2005 329 The purpose of this paper is to determine if any relationship exists between pedestrian deaths and metropolitan statistical areas with high-density vehicle use. The motivation for doing this research is that the percentage of people walking to and fr...
The Relationship of Income, Density, and Commuting Times on Overweight/Obesity Rates in North Carolina 2005 203 A major health problem that is increasing at an alarming rate in the state of North Carolina is obesity (NCDHHS, 2005). The preventable health costs for obesity have been rising all across the nation and account for $117 billion annually in direct ($...
A Review of “Motoring: The Highway Experience in America” 2010 1467 A review of the book “Motoring: The Highway Experience in America” by John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle.
Social Change and Sustainable Transport, by William R. Black and Peter Nijkamp (eds.), Indiana University Press, 2002 [Review] 2005 181 The last decades of the twentieth century witnessed the transforming processes of metropolitan economic restructuring (e.g., flexible production, growth of information and telecommunication technologies) along with social changes that have been creat...
Some Effects of Employment Centers on Commuting Times in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 1990 2000 955 This study examines the relationship between one-way commuting time to major employment clusters in the Atlanta metropolitan area in 1990 and (1) the employment size of the clusters, (2) their distance from the major CBD cluster, and (3) selected att...
Spatial Planning, Urban Form and Sustainable Transport, edited by Katie Williams, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005 [Review] 2008 277 The relationship between spatial urban form and transportation is a core research agenda in the domain of many academic disciplines including geography, planning, civil engineering, sociology, architecture, and urban design. While numerous publicatio...
Special Section on Child and Youth Mobility: Current Research and Nascent Themes 2012 250 Our motivation for this special section can partially be attributed to William Black’s contributions to the proceedings of the 2007 Anderson Distinguished Lecture in Applied Geography, and Barry Wellar’s 2007 Fleming Lecture in Transportation Geograp...
Title: Impact of Sprawl on Commuting in Alabama 2005 1446 The objective of this research is to identify the influence and importance of urban sprawl on commuting patterns within Alabama cities, using the Birmingham and Tuscaloosa metropolitan areas as study areas. The commuting times and distances of sprawl...
Transforming Race and Class in Suburbia: Decline in Metropolitan Baltimore, by Thomas J. Vicino 2010 1911 A review of the book “Transforming Race and Class in Suburbia: Decline in Metropolitan Baltimore” by Thomas J. Vicino.
Transport equity considerations in electric vehicle charging research: a scoping review 2022 26 Many communities have been marginalised in the ongoing policy and planning debates surrounding transportation electrification, even though well allocated charging infrastructure is essential for the environmental and societal benefits of Electric Veh...
Transportation Geography Specialty Group 2013 2008 This is a report of the Transportation Geography Specialty Group (TGSG) at the 2012 annual Association of American Geographers (AAG) Meeting.
Transportation Geography Specialty Group Report 2014 231 It is exciting time for the Transport Geography Specialty Group (TGSG) of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). After a year of membership drive, I am pleased to report that as of December 2013 the TGSG membership has increased to 343, which...
Transportation Sustainability in the Urban Context: A Comprehensive Review 2017 5023 Although the term “sustainability” did not gain traction until the 1980s, concerns about the consequences of transportation technology started long before. This paper reviews the literature on urban transportation sustainability using three framework...
Urban Sprawl, Commuting, and Access to Public Transportation in the Southeast 2006 376 Urban sprawl has emerged as a major urban planning issue in the past decade, with a variety of urban problems attributed to it. It is accused of consuming excessive amounts of land in an uncontrolled fashion, which leads to an unnecessary separation ...
What about Dual-Earner Households in Jobs-Housing Balance Research? An Essential Issue in Transport Geography 2006 2168 Within the last decade considerable concern has been expressed about increasing commuting times and their associated negative effects on traffic congestion and air pollution within metropolitan areas. The links between commuting time and low-density,...
Why Do So Few Minority People Visit National Parks? Visitation and the Accessibility of “America’s Best Idea” 2012 5231 It has been said that national parks are “America's Best Idea,” they are among the most famous and instantly recognizable places in the country, and they attract visitors from all over the world. Yet visitors to these sites are overwhelmingly white. ...