Bulletin of ANPA

Abstract submitted to ANPA Conference July 14–16, 2023

Volume 5, Number 1

Applied and Engineering Physics

Abstract ID: ANPA2023-N0004

Abstract:

ANPA2023-N0004: Measuring the Directness of Accessibility to City’s Amenity using Network First Passage Distances

Authors:

• Bibandhan Poudyal; University of Rochester

• Gourab Ghoshal ; University of Rochester

• Alec Kirkley; University of Hong Kong

Accessibility in general is an abstract concept to quantify. However, several researchers have attempted to quantify accessibility to amenities (city structures) either using spatial heterogeneity—diversity and density of amenities in space or looking for topological (street) connectivity of those amenities. Only few have used the correlation between spatial diversity and topological connectivity of urban amenities to understand the accessibility. We develop a simple, principled, and flexible framework to characterize the directness of accessibility among heterogeneous amenities in a city, which we call the Class First Passage Difference (CFPD). The CFPD quantifies the excess travel distance incurred when using the street network to route between different pairs of amenity types, summarizing both the spatial and topological correlations among amenities in a city. Our measure showed significant correlation with different prosperity and accessibility indicators when compared with the null model—random distribution of amenities keeping their frequency constant. Our measure provides a principled, interpretable and complementary perspective to existing measures of urban accessibility.

To cite this abstract, use the following reference: https://anpaglobal.org/conference/2023/ANPA2023-N0004