Urban spatial patterns in a monocentric city with car-owning and no-car-owning residents

The existing monocentric city models mostly assume that residents are completely rational when making residential location and mode choice, and their direct utilities only depend on the consumption of two normal goods, a housing service and a composite non-housing good. This paper develops a new model by explicitly integrating the preference for solo-driving into car owners' direct utility functions. It is found that, an upward sloping rent-distance relationship exists nearby the Central Business District (CBD) when all residents are car owners, which is significantly different from the conclusion reported in literature. Considering the impact of car owners' preference for solo-driving, we differentiate two possible urban spatial patterns in a monocentric city with car-owning and no-car-owning residents. Numerical results show that an increase of car ownership does not always lead to an expansion in the city size.