Cities and Climate Change: Responding to an Urgent Agenda

Transportation planning and policy have frequently been assessed through measures of mobility. We argue that a shift from mobility to accessibility as transportation’s overarching goal is necessary for consistency with understandings of transportation demand, and is also an approach to increasing the sustainability of the transportation system, including its global warming impacts. To this end, this paper compares transportation accessibility outcomes for 24 of the largest metropolitan regions in the United States. Accessibility outcomes are related to urban form, with denser and more centralized regions showing greater accessibility than others