Accessibility
Accessibility has two meanings in planning. Universal: that anyone, whatever their mobility or senses, can use the street and the building. Territorial: how many jobs, services and people can be reached from a place in a given time. Both measure the same thing: whom the city serves.
A kerb without a ramp excludes the wheelchair, the pushchair and the older person; a bus stop two kilometres away excludes anyone who does not drive. Territorial accessibility is now the central indicator of transport planning, because it measures outcomes —what can be reached— rather than means —how many kilometres of road exist.
Videos on this term (21)
- Urban form
How Five Elements Make a City Legible and Accessible
Kevin Lynch's five elements, paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks, explain how people read a city, and…
3 min read - Housing
Empty Homes and Price Crisis: How Does the Market React?
Why homes stay empty amid a housing crisis and how the market reacts to correction: the home as store of value,…
3 min read - Urban economy
The Heart Beats at the Last Mile: What Delivery Costs the City
How much city it takes for a parcel to arrive in two hours: sheds on the periphery, ghost supermarkets, more…
3 min read - Mobility
The City Steals Time and Offers Speed: Mobility Versus Accessibility
Mobility measures speed; accessibility measures what you can reach. Induced demand, the one-hour travel budget of…
3 min read - Public space
Who Controls Your City's Public Spaces? Private Plazas
Privately owned public spaces look like squares but carry private rules. From New York's 1961 zoning to Occupy,…
3 min read - Climate change
David Simon and Resilient Cities in the Global South
David Simon studies how Global South cities adapt to climate change with informality and few resources.
David Simon 3 min read - Urban economy
Rebel Cities by David Harvey: Right to the City and Urban Revolution
Rebel Cities (2012) by David Harvey explains that capitalism's crises have urban roots and that the right to the…
David Harvey 3 min read - Public space
Marc Augé: what non-places are
What non-places are according to Marc Augé: airports, motorways and shopping malls without history or identity,…
Marc Augé 2 min read - Infrastructure
Graham and Marvin: Splintering Urbanism and Inequality
Splintering Urbanism explains how transport, water, energy and telecommunications networks stopped integrating the…
Stephen Graham 2 min read - Public space
Setha Low and Don Mitchell: The Politics of Public Space
The politics of public space decides who may be in the plaza. What Setha Low shows in On the Plaza and Don Mitchell…
Setha Low 3 min read - Mobility
The Right to Mobility: Social Justice in Urban Transport
The right to mobility is the right to get there, not to move. What David Harvey and Susan Handy explain, what…
3 min read - Public space
Social urbanism: Peñalosa and Gehl on inclusive cities
What social urbanism means for Enrique Peñalosa and Jan Gehl: quality public space, pedestrians before cars, and…
2 min read - Public space
Intersectionality in Urban Space: A City for Everyone
Intersectionality, formulated by Kimberlé Crenshaw, shows that gender, race, class, age and disability produce…
3 min read - Mobility
Transit-Oriented Development: Cervero and Newman
Transit-oriented development builds dense, mixed-use neighbourhoods around stations: Cervero's transit metropolis,…
2 min read - Mobility
Efficient Public Transport: Lessons from Cervero and Kenworthy
Public transport decides whether a city is sustainable and accessible. What sets working systems apart according to…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Urban Political Ecology: Swyngedouw, Kaika and Heynen
Urban political ecology studies who gets water, air and greenery in the city: water as commodity in Swyngedouw,…
2 min read - Public space
Feminist Urbanism: What It Is, Principles and City Examples
Feminist urbanism designs cities for daily life and care work, not for the man with a car. What Jane Darke and…
3 min read - Public space
Doreen Massey: space has a gender too
Massey showed that moving through the city does not cost everyone the same, and called that geographical inequality…
Doreen Massey 2 min read - Mobility
Women's Mobility and Urban Transport: The Mobility of Care
Women travel differently and transport was planned as if they did not. What Susan Hanson and Inés Sánchez de…
3 min read - Mobility
Sustainable mobility: Newman, Banister and Kenworthy
What sustainable mobility means for Peter Newman, David Banister and Jeff Kenworthy: car dependence, density,…
2 min read - Urban form
Learning from Las Vegas: Venturi, Scott Brown, Izenour
A summary of Learning from Las Vegas (1972) by Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour: modernist functionalism…
2 min read
