Space-time Models and Personal Accessibility to Educational Facilities. Case Study of Space-time Accessibility to Schools in the City of Valencia

Abstract

Society nowadays makes intensive use of time and extensive use of space. This has implications for spatial planning of facilities and services since it is now essential to look at personal accessibility (in terms of time and choice) and not just physical distance. Over and above spatial accessibility (distance or cost of travel to the facility or service), location models based on space-time accessibility also consider personal accessibility with respect to the time available to access a facility or service. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the practical usefulness of the theoretical approach grounded in the Geography of Time in enhancing personal accessibility to facilities and services which are provided in a specific space and at a specific time and have fixed start and end times, as is the case with schools. To this end, an ad hoc tool was developed to generate a number of scenarios simulating actual and hypothetical conditions for space-time accessibility to schools in the city of Valencia. The results showed how studying space-time accessibility may be extremely useful in drawing up proposals designed to increase personal accessibility to core services such as education and thereby helping to improve work-life balance.