Spatial accessibility and transport inequity in Finland : Open source models and perspectives from planning practice
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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Date
2025-03
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Language
en
Pages
16
Series
Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Volume 116
Abstract
During the last two decades, accessibility has begun to take a more central role in transport planning and decision making, as its importance has been recognized in many different policy agendas. Although environmental and social sustainability are central in contemporary public policy, the social exclusion effects related to access of opportunities are rarely measured at the national level. In this study, we analyze spatial accessibility to various opportunities in Finland at 1 km resolution and assess accessibility inequalities using the Palma ratio. Furthermore, we test how a web-based tool can be used in stakeholder communication and investigate the usefulness of the accessibility indicators and the tool for planning practice based on focus group discussions with Finnish transport planners. Our results show significant variation in the levels of access to different opportunities across Finnish municipalities. The Palma ratios reveal that the largest disparities are typically located in municipalities surrounding large city regions, where wealthier residents tend to have better access to opportunities compared to low-income populations. Finally, the insights from Finnish planning practitioners reveal that communicating national-level accessibility information via an online tool has high communicative and learning value for various planning and policy processes.Description
Publisher Copyright: © 2024
Keywords
Equality, Land use policy, National-scale analysis, Nordics, Open source tools, Transport justice
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Citation
Pönkänen, M, Tenkanen, H & Mladenović, M 2025, ' Spatial accessibility and transport inequity in Finland : Open source models and perspectives from planning practice ', Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, vol. 116, 102218 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2024.102218