Geographia Polonica (2016) vol. 89, iss. 4

A synthetic index of the spatio-temporal accessibility of communes in Poland

Przemysław Śleszyński

Geographia Polonica (2016) vol. 89, iss. 4, pp. 567-574 | Full text
doi: https://doi.org/GPol.0074

This study presents mapping of Poland on the basis of a synthetic index of spatial accessibility to administrative and settlement centres of three categories, i.e. voivodeship (capitals of the country’s 18 province-regions), sub-regional and poviat (i.e. the capitals of county-level administrative units). Temporal accessibility by means of private car was referred to, on the basis of the author’s own traffic speed model, while the starting point for the map work was isochrone analysis carried out for the centres of the three aforementioned categories. Results were then summed using an original algorithm that weights different categories of accessibility to the urban centres in relation to the latter’s demographic potential.

Keywords: temporal accessibility, spatial accessibility, transport accessibility, accessibility indices, proximity, peripherality, settlement hierarchy, Poland

Przemysław Śleszyński [psleszyn@twarda.pan.pl], Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Twarda 51/55, 00-818 Warsaw: Poland