Empirical Study on Spatial Justice through the Analysis of Transportation Accessibility of Seoul

Abstract

As social welfare has become important throughout all urban issues, spatial justice, which is a combined concept of social justice and space, has gotten a momentum in the field of urban planning. Since the concept of spatial justice was introduced by Harvey in 1973, its implications for planning have been discussed from the diverse spectrum in the U.S. and Europe. Particularly, the issue of spatial justice has been in the center of transit policies because an unfair distribution of transport services directly affect everyday life of the disadvantaged group. However, few empirical studies have tried to investigate the extent to spatial justice in Korea. The purpose of this paper is to examine spatial justice of Seoul through analyzing the relationship between transit accessibility and the location of the disadvantaged. After calculating the accessibility indices, Gini coefficient and Lorenz curve are employed to measure the inequality of the indices with respect to the distribution of the disadvantaged. The results show that the spatial justice in terms of transit accessibility appear differently by the type of the disadvantaged group, including people with age 65 or over, renters, and people with poverty, providing policy implications for transit investment.