It is widely acknowledged that e-shopping has considerable effects on e-shoppers’ travel behavior. Therefore, it is valuable to investigate the built environment effects on online shopping, which can help clarify whether land use policy is effective to manage online shopping and further moderate travel demand. However, this issue has not been fully investigated in prior research. In particular, some existing studies fail to identify a significant link between the built environment and online shopping. One of the possible reasons is that the indirect effects of the built environment on e-shopping through e-shopping attitudes are rarely considered. Against this backdrop, considering the mediating role of e-shopping attitudes, this paper aims to explore the influence of the built environment on the frequency of e-shopping for clothes and shoes, food and drinks, cosmetics, and electronics. Data used in this study are acquired from 675 face-to-face interviews with online buyers in Chengdu, China, and the Structural Equation Modeling method is employed. The outcomes show that higher residential density has a positive impact on online shopping frequency. Higher accessibility to metro stations has an indirect and negative influence on e-shopping frequency through pro-e-shopping attitudes. In contrast, mediated by e-shopping attitudes, higher accessibility to bus stations has an indirect and positive impact on online shopping frequency. The mediating role of attitudes provides a possible explanation for the influences of transportation accessibility on e-shopping frequency. Land use policies seem influential in online shopping attitudes and frequency, and thus moderate e-shoppers’ travel demand.

Although world regions continue to be a key feature of the geographical imagination, there has been relatively little innovative research on world regionalization through the lens of city connections. Against the backdrop of an increasingly urban and interconnected world, in this paper, we evaluate the connections between European and Asian world cities. Based on a model conjecturing intercity connections through office locations of globalized producer services firms, we analyze the networks of both regions’ major cities. To this end, we establish frameworks that allow (1) comparison of the level of connectivity of cities and (2) analysis of the strength and orientation of the interactions between cities. We find that both Europe and Asia have a larger number of well-connected cities than any other world region. Both regions are roughly comparable in terms of the distribution of their urban connectivities, but there are some notable differences (e.g., Asia’s system being more top-heavy) and evolutions (e.g., Asian cities gaining more connectivity over the last decade). There are also two geographical dimensions to the interpretations of these patterns of urban connectivity: (1) the variegated importance of state-spaces (e.g., national gateways) and (2) the uneven regional focus of intercity connections (e.g., Luxembourg and Singapore being less dependent on regional connections). We use our findings to argue that the time is ripe for a more nuanced and contextualized answer to the question of how cities (can) act politically on the global scale in general and Asia–Europe relations in particular.