Accessibility in Transportation and Land Use Planning

Abstract

Accessibility represents a measurement of the spatial distribution of opportunities attended by a transportation system. This study aims to assess the state of knowledge of accessibility by identifying its main applications in urban studies. In this regard, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) along with a bibliometric analysis and identified 10 themes of study arranged according to the intrinsic characteristics of 120 selected publications from the last two decades. The data extraction and synthesis allowed us to relate 82 publications into 19 applications in urban studies of accessibility measures. The results showed the flexibility and potential of using accessibility measures as an evaluation and decision-making tool for urban studies, especially in promoting equity and socioeconomic territory justice. The study pointed out the raising of new themes related to aspects of urban land use, equity, quality of life, and transit systems. The availability and quality of data are the main factors in selecting variables. It is expected that future researches could explore contributions provided by the advancement of ICTs, especially in the Global South.