Structural accessibility: Indicator of socio-spatial inequality

Accessibility is understood as the ease with which an activity can be reached from a given starting point in space, using a given transport system. Despite being a universal and constitutional right, accessibility is enjoyed unequally in the city and metropolitan area of São Paulo. In the 1980s, French engineer Koenig formulated a mathematical model to measure the accessibility of each zone of a territory, relating the number of jobs and the travel time that the inhabitants of this zone spend to reach their workplaces scattered throughout all zones of the territory in question. The result, known as ’structural accessibility, ’ allows for the mapping of the mobility conditions of the inhabitants of a territory, highlighting the inequality of access to which they are subjected.