General scores for accessibility and inequality measures in urban areas

TL;DR

This paper introduces general methods to evaluate urban accessibility using public transportation data, highlighting inequalities and providing a platform for visualization and decision-making.

Contribution

It presents novel scoring methods for urban accessibility and inequality, and offers an interactive platform for analysis and awareness.

Findings

Significant inequalities in accessibility distribution across populations.

Similar patterns of inequality observed across different urban environments.

The platform www.citychrone.org facilitates accessibility analysis and decision-making.

Abstract

In the last decades, the acceleration of urban growth has led to an unprecedented level of urban interactions and interdependence. This situation calls for a significant effort among the scientific community to come up with engaging and meaningful visualizations and accessible scenario simulation engines. The present paper gives a contribution in this direction by providing general methods to evaluate accessibility in cities based on public transportation data. Through the notion of isochrones, the accessibility quantities proposed measure the performance of transport systems at connecting places and people in urban systems. Then we introduce scores rank cities according to their overall accessibility. We highlight significant inequalities in the distribution of these measures across the population, which are found to be strikingly similar across various urban environments. Our results are released through the interactive platform: www.citychrone.org, aimed at providing the community at large with a useful tool for awareness and decision-making.