A framework for modern time geography: emphasizing diverse constraints on accessibility

Abstract

Time geography is widely used by geographers as a model for understanding accessibility. Recent changes in how access is created, an increasing awareness of the need to better understand individual variability in access, and growing availability of detailed spatial and mobility data have created an opportunity to build more flexible time geography models. Our goal is to outline a research agenda for a modern time geography that allows new modes of access and a variety of data to flexibly represent the complexity of the relationship between time and access. A modern time geography is more able to nuance individual experience and creates a pathway for monitoring progress toward inclusion. We lean on the original work by Hägerstrand and the field of movement GIScience to develop both a framework and research roadmap that, if addressed, can enhance the flexibility of time geography to help ensure time geography will continue as a cornerstone of accessibility research. The proposed framework emphasizes the individual and differentiates access based on how individuals experience internal, external, and structural factors. To enhance nuanced representation of inclusion and exclusion, we propose research needs, focusing efforts on implementing flexible space–time constraints, inclusion of definitive variables, addressing mechanisms for representing and including relative variables, and addressing the need to link between individual and population scales of analysis. The accelerated digitalization of society, including availability of new forms of digital spatial data, combined with a focus on understanding how access varies across race, income, sexual identity, and physical limitations requires new consideration for how we include constraints in our studies of access. It is an exciting era for time geography and there are massive opportunities for all geographers to consider how to incorporate new realities and research priorities into time geography models, which have had a long tradition of supporting theory and implementation of accessibility research.

Harnessing mobility data to capture changing work from home behaviours between censuses

“…While these data provided valuable near‐real‐time measurements of behavioural changes, mobility data collected as a side effect of other commercial services include uncertainties in the data generation process regarding the size and representativeness of the sample of individuals from which these data were collected (Buckee et al., 2020; Grantz et al., 2020; Wesolowski et al., 2013). Research has identified biases in aggregated measures of mobility, relating to the demographics of users of certain applications which generate the data, as well as the negative biases for specific regions and locations where these data do not remain stable over time (Ballantyne et al., 2022; Coston et al., 2021; Dodge & Nelson, 2023). There is also evidence of variation in the relationship between aggregated human mobility indicators and the incidence of COVID‐19 for data collected in urban and rural areas, likely reflecting varying qualities of data underlying aggregated measures (Kishore et al., 2022).…”