The Extra Mile

Abstract

Contents 1 rural areas Table D6Sensitivity analysis of perceived accessibility determinants in rural areas using different distance decay parameters 22Chapter 1 lockdown when directed mobility was severely restricted and offset by undirected travel (Hook et al., 2021;Mokhtarian and Chen, 2004;Roth and Zahavi, 1981;Schafer and Victor, 2000). For most of human history, activities generally took place locally as everyday mobility was based on human and animal power (Pooley, 2020). From the 19th century onwards, and especially in the second half of the 20th century, a different picture emerged. Improvements in transport technologies, the massive enlargement of infrastructure and falling transport costs, not least due to cheap oil, have dramatically expanded people's travel horizons (Grübler, 2004;Kent, 2014;Metz, 2013). Unprecedented levels of personal mobility have fostered the upscaling of economic activity, with economies of scale increasingly outweighing transport costs (Fujita et al., 1999;Krugman, 1991;Vickerman et al., 1999). The increase in potential mobility has fostered suburbanization and the decentralization of economic activity within cities. This has led to the growth of employment outside urban cores but near transport infrastructure, particularly motorways (McMillen and Stefani, 2003). The more recent structural shift in developed countries towards a knowledge-based service economy has also encouraged high-density urban development fuelled by agglomeration benefits from co-location (Puga, 2010).These two trends together, of upscaling and of (sub)urban growth, have led to small local facilities in rural areas closing in favour of larger venues in more central locations at greater distances (