Efficient and nice – Urban accessibility and public transport

Abstract

In common sense, there is already a widespread awareness that the quality expressed by a city corresponds to a sum of its intrinsic values. These can be grouped synthetically into the presence of memories and pre-existing history, the concentration of economic fluxes, the concentration of political and administrative powers, the variety of educational opportunities, the presence of areas for free time and recreation, and the level of guaranteed safety. Following an increase in the fluxes—both inflow and outflow—that involve the urban environment on a daily basis, one of the factors that profoundly affects the sense of quality perceived by citizens and periodic or occasional users of the urban environment is the degree of ease in using and crossing the city with different types of mobility. Accessibility can therefore be defined as "the ease in meeting one's needs in locations distributed over space for a subject located in a given area" (Cascetta et al. 2013), and it is playing an increasingly important role in defining the image that the city projects to the external world. Based on these premises, it is clear that the accessibility a city offers its users through its forms, urban furniture, and the system of public transport can directly impact the perception of quality and the sense of well-being for individuals that live in and cross the urban environment (Rode and Floater 2014).