To be accessible or not to be accessible seems to be the question for economic activities these days. Adequate access to, for example, consumers, labor, suppliers, are vital conditions for the functioning of firms. For economic activities it is not the transport system itself that is important, but the fact that the transport systems provides them with access to spatially and temporally dispersed resources. Planning therefore needs take both the qualities of the transport system and the land-use system in to account. The concept of potential accessibility – or what and how can be reached from a given point in space – can provide a useful conceptual framework to address this need. Infrastructure networks play a crucial role in determining accessibility. Yet, traditional urban transportation planning often neglects this important role infrastructure networks play and limits its focus to the efficiency of the transport system itself. This study explores the use of accessibility as a framework planners can use to approach land use and transportation issues in a different way. The paper maps the quality of the accessibility in the Amsterdam region on different scales and investigates which qualities are more favorable to certain activities then others. Creating these favorable accessibility conditions is what planners of the land-use and transport system should aim for. The paper concludes with reviewing different regional planning policies to determine if this is indeed in the mind of planners. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting