The difference in accessibility to retail areas : A network analysis on socio-economic differences in accessibility to retail areas in three Swedish urban localities

Strategies and concepts of how cities should be developed are constantly changed. This thesis has investigated the accessibility to central and external areas, when using public transit and car as mode of transport as well as the location of low-income households in each city. The difference in accessibility for different household income-groups such as low-income and high-income has been compared. To do this the study has conducted a network analysis to investigate the travel time for the retail areas, how they differ depending on if using public transit or car as mode of transport. Transportation networks have been created for all three cities studied and service areas based on the networks. Choropleth maps have been created to show the distribution of low-income households. Previous studies have been considered to formulate the cutoff values for the travel time and to discuss the findings of the results. The three cities of Eskilstuna, Halmstad and Karlstad has been studied in the thesis, with all of them having around 70 000 inhabitants. The study has shown that all retail areas regardless of being central or external are reachable within a 15-minute travel time in all studied cities. The mobility can be increased by using car to reach these areas, but for the groups that do not have access to cars the accessibility is lower. The accessibility by public transit to reach central retail areas was higher in all the studied cities compared to the external areas. However, differences in the accessibility among the cities could be seen, where Halmstad had a lower share of the total amount of households as well as low-income households in all service areas. Eskilstuna had the highest share of low-income groups closest to central retail and Karlstad to external retail areas using public transit. The 15-minute city concept is followed in many cities around Sweden, where planning has shifted onto focusing on proximity instead of mobility. But the results showed generally that the access towards external retail areas were much worse than for central. Even if low-income groups had much higher accessibility the central retail areas, the establishments of external retail areas can affect the accessibility negatively. From the findings planning should focus on increasing the access to public transit and take social justice into account, to reach more sustainability and reduce inequalities as well as transport poverties in the future.