Inequalities in job-related accessibility: Testing an evaluative approach and its policy relevance in Buenos Aires

Title
Inequalities in job-related accessibility: Testing an evaluative approach and its policy relevance in Buenos Aires
AuthorPaola Pucci, Giovanni Vecchio, Lucía Bocchimuzzi, Giovanni Lanza
Line(s)Acces and Movility
Year of Publication2019
Journal TitleApplied Geography
Keywords
Accessibility, Job-related mobility, Activity participation, Social inclusion, Buenos Aires
AbstractAccessibility, as a requisite to guarantee the individual ability to participate in valued activities, has been receiving increasing yet scattered attention from diverse theoretical and operational approaches. These approaches focus on how individuals are able to engage in out-of-home activities, participate in social life as well as on their involvement in other activities that contribute to their overall well-being. The paper aims at further investigating such approaches, analysing forms of inequality in job-related mobilities while assuming that a person’s accessibility depends on both contextual and individual factors. Taking the Buenos Aires metropolitan area as a suitable testbed, the paper offers an approach to identify the inequalities in job-related accessibility at the neighbourhood scale. The approach considers the relationship between the quality and supply of public transport, level of social exclusion and reachable employment opportunities. The research proposes a synthetic index of inequalities in access to job opportunities (IAO) to identify disadvantaged urban areas characterized by a confluence of problems related to socio-economic deprivations, low accessibility to employment as well as a low mobility and poor quality of transport supply. The approach has an explicit operational dimension and intends to contribute to outlining tailored measures to guarantee better job opportunities, as in the case of people living in areas experiencing sub-standard levels of accessibility to workplaces.
Doihttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2019.04.002
Corresponding AuthorPaola Puccia, paola.pucci@polimi.it