Joining Urban morphology, Spatio-Temporal and socio-cognitive accessibility for an Inclusive City Environment – JUSTICE

The accessibility calculation task combines generic and specific data (transit station elevators, age of passengers…) to provide results. It is decomposed into several tasks, considering the broad and multifaceted definition of accessibility addressed in the JUSTICE project.

Therefore, we measure both the connectivity and the generic accessibility (i.e. in a classical way, for the general population) through the combination of the modeling approaches.

The specific accessibility of physically impaired people is measured by only considering the infrastructures and buildings that are accessible to them. In the same way, the specific accessibility of the other specific audiences is measured with a realism concern. All these initial measures, however, only represent a so-called potential accessibility.

In order to assess the accessibility of specific populations more closely, in situ experiments and focus groups are conducted with representatives of the four specific audiences. This is the best method to collect users’ perceptions and track their specific socio-cognitive barriers, including those related to gender. The project focuses on three cities (Konya, Turkey; Brussels, Belgium; Strasbourg, France).

These results will enrich the potential accessibility measures and will lead to operational and specific accessibility measures in a second phase.

These operational and specific accessibility measures are compared to generic accessibility and potential accessibility. A methodological framework for the recommendations is developed on the basis of the analysis of the results and the round tables with stakeholders. A handbook of good practices will be privileged rather than a ranking of cities. The aim is to highlight the relevant recommendations at the scale of a location or of a network, as well as more general principles to be integrated into urban planning documents. Tangible tools such as digital applications are also developed, in particular to better serve specific populations in public transport.

According to the results of the literature review the semi-structured interviews, the participative workshops and the local contexts, the indicators (Travel time, Transfer time, Walking time, Walk Distance, Number of transfers), the facets of justice (all the justice components discussed during the workshops were gathered into three main dimensions: equity, inclusiveness and participation), the POIs to which accessibility is measured (10-15 by city, standing for business districts, leisure spots, health facilities, social services, etc.), and the main constraints to the use of PT (walking distance, disabled-compliance of the stations, lack of elevators, lack of ticket desk, tediousness of the transfer, etc.) were determined. With respect to the heterogeneity within the four audiences but also to the similarities between those profiles, it has been chosen to approach the constraints both transversally and specifically. These constraints are relative to hypotheses rather than profiles and they can be combined to represent multi-constrained accessibility. For instance, the combination of the disabled compliant stations with the underground stations equipped with an elevator can represent accessibility for wheelchair users.This constraints-based accessibility is developed through the setting of parameters in the accessibility calculator.

In view of generic potential accessibility, graphs have been modelled in OpenTripPlanner.

Within the set of about 15 constraints by city, 5 were highlighted as high priority criteria. This first and crucial set of accessibility measures will enable mapping for the focus groups.
In order to measure potential specific accessibility, the highlighted constraints were interpreted as parameters in the graph-based network modelling and the processing of the measures. The relevant use of these parameters during the graph construction and the routing step on OpenTripPlanner allows the providing of accessibility measures that match the identified constraints.

Besides, about the half of the commented walks have been realized in the 3 cities.

During the first part of the project, the stakeholders were strongly involved as well as NGOs. The scientific community has mainly be reached via conferences that have been held in the beginning of the second year. Last, the media to reach civil society are still in preparation and should be released soon.

Justice’s second part will mainly be dedicated to the implementation of the qualitative experimentation (commented walks and focus groups) into the measures of potential accessibility for the generic and specific publics and the development of the recomendations handbook.

In addition, following the first set of results, we will produce easy-to-understand maps as a discussion basis for focus groups. Afterwards, the development of an interactive online geovizualisation tool is planned for year no. 2. The feeding of this platform by maps will continue until the end of the project.

Besides, the operational specific accessibility will be measured for the 3 cities, including the feedback of the qualitative approaches. Indeed, focus groups and commented walks will be used to collect accessibility representations and better characterize the gaps between generic and specific accessibilities.

The last year of the project will be dedicated to the building of the recomendations handbook, co-constructing guidelines with the stakeholders.
Finally, the dissemination of our approach, method, and results will be strengthened throughout the second part of the project, notably with the release of the video clip presenting the commented trip of a blind person across the Strasbourg public transport network. In addition, the team is currently thinking about the planning of an all-stakeholders meeting in one of the 3 cities to enhance the dissemination in the European PT decision-makers sphere.

International Conference: 3
Research Seminar: 2
Other communications: 2

This project aims at revisiting intra-urban accessibility issues through bridging two research fields that have mostly ignored each other. On the one hand, social and spatial sciences (including sociology, anthropology, land planning and urban studies) have extensively discussed the fact concrete mobilities (and thus access to the city) can be limited by social, physical, and socio-cognitive inequalities in a context where public spaces, public transport systems and buildings are not designed to be fully inclusive (see Ellis et al., 2019). These constraints arguably reinforce the intrinsically uneven nature of accessibility across places and time. On the other hand, quantitative research in geography has measured and modelled accessibility patterns that ignore the aforementioned inequalities, implicitly supposing that accessibility is inclusive. In contrast, the JUSTICE project will rely on the very idea that accessibility is genuinely not the same for everyone. Modelling exercises will thus be multiplied and refined for four specific audiences suffering from travel constraints and urban design: disabled, blind and visually impaired, elderly and socially underprivileged people. Importantly, how social inequalities and impairments affect accessibility will be captured from involving the concerned persons as well as stakeholders. All this will make it possible to set up inclusive accessibility policies.