Transport and equity in Latin America: a critical review of socially oriented accessibility assessments^*

* This paper has made use of some material that was presented at the RSA - Latin America Division Conference in Colombia in September 2019, where it was one of three prize bursary winning papers, presented by Giovanni Vecchio under the same title as this paper

ABSTRACT

A growing concern for mobility-related social inclusion and equity is evident from both academic research and planning best practices. Scholarly research promotes accessibility as the main aim of transport planning, assuming it as the evaluative approach that better conveys how mobility contributes to individuals' well-being and participation in social life. Accessibility can be crucial to address the socio-spatial inequalities that characterise manifold settings across the world. Amongst them, Latin American countries have been keen in tackling such imbalances through mobility-related interventions, as the renowned cases of Curitiba, Medellin and Bogotá show. The widespread interest in mobility as both a cause and effect of social disparities has generated an increasing stream of work that examines Latin American settings through the lenses of accessibility. This paper aims at critically reviewing the growing scholarly works that, providing accessibility-based evaluations, has examined issues of transport and equity in Latin America. Proposing a novel conceptual framework that considers the underlying ethical stance, components of accessibility and implications for planning and policy, this work examines what approaches, features and indicators are present in the current literature, as well as what settings have been taken into consideration by scholarly research. Moreover, the review has an explicit operational interest, to define what indicators are relevant or missing to assess accessibility in the light of social concerns, as well as to consider the current and potential implications that such research findings have on transport planning and policy. The review highlights how a growing but still limited body of work has examined transport and equity in Latin America, suggesting academic, technical and operational avenues to enhance theoretical and practical approaches to the issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Transport
• mobility
• accessibility
• equity
• social inclusion
• Latin America

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Giovanni Vecchio http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5920-1507

Notes

* This paper has made use of some material that was presented at the RSA - Latin America Division Conference in Colombia in September 2019, where it was one of three prize bursary winning papers, presented by Giovanni Vecchio under the same title as this paper

1 The research was conducted in two stages: first, in October 2018 for most of the articles and then, an update in July 2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CEDEUS – Center for Sustainable Urban Development [CONICYT/ FONDAP 15110020]; the Postdoctoral Fellowship School of Engineering UC 2018; the PhD scholarship funded by CONICYT Chile (CONICYT-PCHA/Doctorado Nacional/2018-21180199); the Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico de Chile (FONDECYT), through the projects 1150239 and 1180605; and the Bus Rapid Transit Centre of Excellence funded by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundation.