Beyond close vs far: perceived access to services and the geography of territorial injustice

This paper examines how perceived access to services structures territorial justice, wellbeing, and the emergence of left-behindness. Moving beyond approaches that either aggregate all services into a single index or rely exclusively on objective distance-based indicators, we conceptualise access as the perceived travel time required to reach services and distinguish between two major categories of services: basic services (markets, primary and lower-secondary schools, family doctors, and recreation spaces) and specialised services (high schools and universities, advanced and emergency health services, cultural venues). Using a latent class approach, we identify four accessibility classes (H_Acc, S_mod, S_far, L_Acc) that explain how service access is experienced as a configuration. The methodology was applied on Romanian territory using a national representative survey. The results show that the class with the most favourable accessibility to both basic and specialised services (H_Acc) is more prevalent in medium-sized cities rather than in large metropolitan areas. Accordingly, the idea that the largest cities represent the primary “sweet spots” of accessibility is partially called into question. Rural areas and small towns remain the most disadvantaged for both types of accessibility. This typology replaces binary framings (close/far; present/absent) with graded categories of perceived distance, providing a policy-relevant framework.