Road Network Accessibility and Socio-economic Disadvantage Across Adelaide Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Transport mobility is important in defining the population’s accessibility to services and facilities. Few studies have investigated the relationship between geographical accessibility of urban services for the population living in residential areas and socio-economic parameters. In this paper, the distribution of residential parcels is analyzed from a rarely explored angle—that is, its location in relation to services and facilities. The aims of this study are first to develop an index of the accessibility of various urban resources to each residential parcel in a metropolitan area of Adelaide using spatial data analysis in Geographical Information Systems and then to develop a relationship with socio-economic and land use attributes of statistical areas using ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression analysis. As expected the ‘Distance to CBD’ variable has a positive relationship with metropolitan Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Adelaide (metro-ARIA) meaning that the farther away statistical areas have lower accessibility to services. In the case of population density variable, the relationship is mostly negative except few areas in the far south, west and northern areas, which showed a positive relationship. When similar results for median family income were studied, in some of the southernmost parts of Adelaide, it showed a strong positive relationship with metro-ARIA. This research will not only provide new insight into spatial differences between metropolitan areas but also potentially help in assessing the impact of the changes in services on land use. The findings of this paper, therefore, have important implications for service provision and social infrastructure investment.