In order to make cities and regions attractive for the population, a central element, among various other factors, is the transport connection of residential areas to those places where activities such as work, education, shopping or leisure activities take place. For the purposes of sustainable mobility, it is important to be able to carry out a quantitative assessment of mobility for various modes of transport (walking, cycling, public transport, motorised private transport) and to derive appropriate planning decisions. In recent years, the concept of spatial accessibility has become established as a means of assessing how well, for example, shops, schools, local recreation areas or health facilities are accessible to the population. It provides an integrated framework for evaluating both settlement planning and traffic aspects of a system and for comparing different development scenarios. The Västra Götaland region in southwest Sweden is pursuing very similar goals in a larger project in collaboration with the University of Gothenburg.
The project contents can be roughly summarised as follows: In a first step, methods were developed to determine spatial accessibility for municipalities as well as for the entire region. The main focus was on issues relating to transport, housing, employment and social issues. In a second step, instruments (GIS-based tools, R-Code) were developed to support regional planning. In addition to the development of methods and tools, this project also aimed to explicitly promote cooperation between regional planning practice and science. This was supported, among other things, by the fact that a one-day workshop (presentation of the project results; practical computer training with specific calculation examples in R) was held in Gothenburg. The workshop was attended by 20 people from different planning areas in the city of Gothenburg, the region, universities and consulting firms. In addition to communicating the project results, the participants had the opportunity to get to know the new methods and tools and to try them out for themselves in teams, thus promoting cooperation between the institutions.