Accessibility evaluation of land-use and transport strategies: review and research directions

Accessibility is an important characteristic of metropolitan areas and is often reflected in transportation and land-use planning goals. But the concept of accessibility has rarely been translated into performance measures by which policies are evaluated, despite a substantial literature on the concept. This paper is an attempt to bridge the gap between the academic literature and the practical application of such measures and provide a framework for the development of accessibility measures. Issues that planners must address in developing an accessibility measure are outlined, and two case studies suggestive of the range of possible approaches are presented.

Measuring accessibility: an exploration of issues and alternatives

Increasing walking: How important is distance to, attractiveness, and size of public open space?

The relative influence of individual, social and physical environment determinants of physical activity.

Primary care is recognized as the most important form of healthcare for maintaining population health because it is relatively inexpensive, can be more easily delivered than specialty and inpatient care, and if properly distributed it is most effective in preventing disease progression on a large scale. Recent advances in the field of health geography have greatly improved our understanding of the role played by geographic distribution of health services in population health maintenance. However, most of this knowledge has accrued for hospital and specialty services and services in rural areas. Much less is known about the effect of distance to and supply of primary care on primary care utilization, particularly in the U.S.

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Spatial accessibility of primary care: concepts, methods and challenges

An empirical examination of the residential development patterns illustrates that accessibility and the availability of vacant developable land can be used as the basis of a residential land use model. The author presents an operational definition and suggests a method for determining accessibility patterns within metropolitan areas. This is a process of distributing forecasted metropolitan population to small areas within the metropolitan region. Although the model presented is not yet sufficiently well refined for estimating purposes, the concept and the approach may be potentially useful tools for metropolitan planning purposes.

How Accessibility Shapes Land Use

The authors explore possible equilibrium distributions for large retail trade center's in the Baltimore metropolitan area. Possible sites for centers are selected on general planning grounds and tested for feasibility and “balance.” Balance is determined in terms of the volume of business attracted by each center in relation to its size. By repeated trials, it is established that there exists a balanced distribution in which the size of centers is related to their drawing power, which in turn depends on the distribution of purchasing power projected for the area and the transportation facilities and for trip-makers. This land use model is intimately related to transportation models, by The balanced distribution of retail outlets turns out to be the minimum cost pattern for trip-makers. This land use model is intimately related to transportation models, by way of network tracing and a gravity model trip distribution theory. It represents a departure from some of the restrictions of central place t...

Walter G. Hansen

Papers

How Accessibility Shapes Land Use

A retail market potential model