Accessibility assessment of urban mobility: the case of Volos, Greece

Abstract

Abstract This article studies the spatial point patterns of the infrastructures’ location of selected activities in the city of Volos, Greece, namely hotels, restaurants, banks and gas stations , comparatively with the maps of the urban bus lines and the urban road network of the city. The selected facilities represent a considerable portion of the economic activity in the city of Volos, suggesting a coastal city with a major productivity orientation to the tertiary sector, a substandard industrial profile and a privileged location to a famous mountain in Greece. The analysis is conducted by using geostatistic measures, metrics and methods of spatial analysis, detecting spatial patterns and dependencies among the examined activities. Given the familiar socioeconomic framework of the city of Volos, the purpose of this article is to detect how the geographical and spatial constraints affect the citizens’ accessibility to the examined urban economic activities and to discuss how the location of these activities affect urban mobility and the potential of the city for economic development.