Mobility resources and urban accessibility in municipalities in the south of the Guadalajara metropolitan area, México

Abstract

This paper contributes to establishing the relationship between the availability of mobility resources and the way in which residents of peripheral municipalities of metropolises access urban services and significant places in the territory, in the context of the splintered urbanism and urban sprawl that characterizes many Latin-American cities. Using data from a mobility survey conducted in the municipalities in the south of the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area, an analytical typology of households was created according to their possession of mobility resources. This typology was used to analyze households ́ access conditions to shops, jobs, schools, and hospitals. It is worthy to note the diversity of situations lived: there are households that have a great deal of mobility resources and can use large tracts of the urban territory to search for convenient urban resources, and other groups practically without mobility resources, that mainly concentrate on exploiting the most basic urban goods and services in the immediate surroundings.