ABSTRACT
Accessibility is a concept that indicates an individual's ability to conduct activities within a given environment. This chapter travel diary data for Chengdu, China and Chennai, India in order to understand the differences in spatial patterns of accessibility of low-income women and men. The current debate in the context of developed countries is on the role of causality between land use and travel behaviour given that land use policies are very difficult to change. Accessibility measures include cumulative opportunity measures, gravity based measures, utility measures and space-time measures. The challenge to planners in developing countries is that place-based accessibility varies widely for different segments of the population. Utility-based accessibility measures usually define accessibility as the expected maximum utility from a random utility model of destination choice. Space-time measures add the time dimension to accessibility estimation. Accessibility variations in space which also incorporate income and gender are therefore best measured when disaggregated location and individual data are available.
