Accessibility Analysis and Transport Planning

Accessibility is a concept that has become central to physical planning during the last fifty years and improving accessibility is a principal goal in transport planning and policy-making throughout the world. Batty (2009) traces the origins of the concept back to the 1920s where it was used in location theory and regional economic planning, becoming important once transport planning began, mainly in North America where it came to be associated with transport networks and trip distribution patterns. Its conceptual basis is even older. Accessibility, defined as the potential for interaction by Hansen (1959) in his classic paper ``How accessibility shapes land use'' is based on the notion of potential which dates back to the social physics school in the 19th century. In the past decades, accessibility has become a central concept in civil engineering, geography, spatial economics and other academic fields, and a myriad of accessibility concepts and measures have been developed and operationalized. The book brings together new approaches in accessibility research and modelling with best practices in accessibility evaluations as a framework/tool to support integrated transport and land-use policy-making in Europe and the U.S.