Outward Accessibility in Urban Street Networks: Characterization and Improvements

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method combining complex network analysis and self-avoiding random walks to quantify and improve urban street network accessibility across different spatial scales.

Contribution

It presents a new approach for measuring and enhancing urban accessibility using complex networks and random walk dynamics, applied to Sao Carlos.

Findings

Effective quantification of accessibility in urban networks.

Identification of areas with low accessibility.

Potential improvements suggested for urban planning.

Abstract

The dynamics of transportation through towns and cities is strongly affected by the topology of the connections and routes. The current work describes an approach combining complex networks and self-avoiding random walk dynamics in order to quantify in objective and accurate manner, along a range of spatial scales, the accessibility of places in towns and cities. The transition probabilities are estimated for several lengths of the walks and used to calculate the outward accessibility of each node. The potential of the methodology is illustrated with respect to the characterization and improvements of the accessibility of the town of Sao Carlos.