• Decentralization of activities resulted in two opposite effects. First, commuting
time has remained relatively stable in duration. Second, commuting increasingly
tends to be longer and to be made using the automobile rather than by public transit,
a trend occurring in developing as well as in developed countries. Most transit and
road systems were developed to facilitate suburb-to-city, rather than suburb-to suburb,
commuting. As a result, suburban highways are often as congested as urban
highways.