Proximity changes to what and for whom? Investigating sustainable accessibility change in the Gothenburg city region 1990–2014

ABSTRACT

This paper operationalizes the concept of sustainable accessibility by emphasizing the environmental and social dimensions of sustainability from a spatial perspective. In doing so, we develop a heuristic model that focuses on the crucial dimensions of who gets access to what by using sustainable means of movement. We apply our conceptual approach in an examination of trends in sustainable accessibility for different social groups living in Gothenburg, Sweden between 1990 and 2014. On the basis of welfare-related and time-geographical considerations, we investigate accessibility by proximity for low- and high-income earners, people with small children, and elderly people. We investigate to what extent proximity to fundamental facilities increases or decreases over time, indicating changing conditions for sustainability. The results show that opportunities for living a local life and achieving accessibility via proximity differ socially. Low-income earners and the elderly generally live closer to the facilities important for daily life than do high-income earners and parents of young children. We also show that the opportunities for various social groups to obtain access by proximity change over time. For example, we observe a trend in which over time older people face reduced opportunities to reach daily facilities in their local neighborhoods.

KEYWORDS:

• Change over time
• Gothenburg
• heuristic model
• proximity
• slow modes
• sustainable accessibility

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council Formas (grant number 215-2013-1083).

Notes

¹ Feasibility relates more to the issues of “accessibility for whom” discussed above and includes mobility, time, or other responsibilities affected by, among others, an individual's age, physical condition, time pressure, and commitment to other household members (Alfonzo, 2005). Accordingly, Marquet et al. (2016) show that the individual characteristics of the traveller are highly important when it comes to destination and distance choices.

² This applies to trips made to specific destinations, which is the focus of our study. When it comes to strolling, other features of the physical environment (e.g., design) are often more important.

³ Note that our focus is on the potential for accessibility by proximity and does not measure actual travel behavior. It would, however, be hard to justify selection of destinations that people never reach by slow modes today. We turned to travel and time use surveys in Gothenburg and Sweden, respectively, in order to evaluate these criteria.