Multifunctional Land Use: An Accessibility Interpretation

The need for an efficient urban land use has generated much interest in new forms of urban architecture. In The Netherlands, at present an intensive discussion is taking place on so-called multifunctional land use. This concept aims to concentrate and combine several socio-economic functions in the same area, so as to save scarce space and to exploit economies of synergy. This paper tries to define multifunctional land use from the perspective of accessibility, since, from the viewpoint of spatial functionality, the appropriate demarcation should be based on transport costs and their impact on mutual interactions between actors. The interpretation of multifunctional land use in terms of accessibility is attractive since its avoids the demarcation problem implying the neglect of activities located outside the demarcated area. In order to incorporate the multifunctional character of accessibility, attention will also be paid to the multiplicity of interactions and to multipurpose trips. Addressing the notion of multifunctionality by means of accessibility is also relevant for the measurement of urbanisation economies. These will in this paper be replaced by accessibility economies, again in order not having to apply an arbitrary demarcation rule for metropolitan areas.