University of California Transportation Center

Explosive suburban employment growth, broad processes of economic restructuring, and rapid developments in transportation and telecommunications technologies have fundamentally altered the spatial and organizational composition of both where we work and where we live. How have these broad spatial processes impacted intra-metropolitan accessibility? This research presents an analytical framework for evaluating and monitoring intra-metropolitan accessibility to employment opportunities. More specifically, it (1) determines how accessibility has been defined, modeled, measured, and interpreted; (2) presents a new approach for evaluating intra-metropolitan accessibility founded on the Couclelis proximal space construct, the Getis/Ord G spatial statistic, a level-of-service definition of accessibility, multiple scale analysis, and a multi-dimensional conceptualization of accessibility processes; and (3) applies this alaytical framework, implemented within a GIS environment, to employment data for the greater Los Angeles region in order to demonstrate its effectiveness and potential for addressing a wide variety of empirical research questions, for contributing to urban theory, and for evaluating urban and transportation planning strategies.