Reflections on the future of accessibility

摘要

Accessibility is a fundamental topic of transport geography. The history of accessibility is typically expressed as the history of the development of particular measures, such as topological, cumulative opportunity, population potential, or space-time (Kwan and Weber, 2003; Horner, 2004). The geographical concept of accessibility usually requires several conditions to be meaningful. There must be some spatial separation of origins and destinations, such as between home and workplaces, which people have a need or desire to move between. In the US this only became common in the 19th century, and future trends have been debated by advocates of telecommuting. There must also be an impedance or restriction on movement, preventing unlimited mobility, though it has been argued that telecommunications will cause this condition to decline in importance as well.