Accessibility: Long Term Perspectives

Kay Axhausen
Additional contact information
Kay Axhausen: Institute for Transport Planning and Systems, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, http://www.ivt.ethz.ch/

The Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2008, vol. 1, issue 2, 5-22

Abstract: Improved accessibility and its correlate lower generalized cost of contact, travel and transport have been sought by dynamic human societies for their economic and social benefits through- out recorded history. The paper will reflect about this process at a number of different spatial and temporal scales based on a conceptual model. Looking back at European history, it will trace the interaction between Christaller’s logic of local market areas and the idea of (low contact cost) network cities. Focusing on Switzerland since 1950 it will show how network investment changed the relative distribution of population and employment and how this in- teracted with changes in the preferences of the travelers. Using a recent snapshot of how a substantial sample of Swiss maintain their social networks over often very large areas, it will try to answer the question of what will happen in the future, if the current trend of ever lower costs of contact will persist.

Keywords: Accessibility; policy; network growth; social network geography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/66/33 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:jtralu:0008

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Transport and Land Use is currently edited by David M. Levinson

More articles in The Journal of Transport and Land Use from Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Arlene Mathison (mathi032@umn.edu).