The study of dynamic travel behavior explores the individual and environmental triggers that drive new travel patterns over the life course. In the context of urban planning, these triggers hold vital information regarding the strength of land use policies and demographic shifts on individual responses to public investments in smart growth planning. This study describes a new approach to identifying drivers for change using the life-course behavioral framework to describe dynamics in task allocation over the individuals' lifetime. Using longitudinal travel behavior and land use data from the Puget Sound region, years 1989--2000, and latent growth modeling, the study finds that part of behavioral change is explained by yearly changes and part is explained by long-term planning and adaptation to changes in the household structure, such as having children.

In addition to the study of individual behavior, the dynamics of the built environment are examined in the context of smart growth planning and the jobs-housing balance. Smart growth planning in the Puget Sound attempts to create a jobs-housing balance by intensifying and diversifying residents and businesses in 26 regional growth centers. The success of these planned centers to meet the jobs-housing needs is measured using commuting behavior of the center residents for 2010. Using the National Establishments Time Series dataset, centers with high levels of professional employment (~65%) and low levels of retail employment (~30%) have short commute times and low levels of single-occupancy commutes.