Evolving accessibility landscapes: mutations of transportation networks in China

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an exceptional extension of public transportation networks in People's Republic of China, both at a national scale with the construction of the first HSR railway network of the world, and at local scales with numerous cities developing high coverage subway networks often from scratch. This chapter studies these mutations, both from a quantitative perspective with the study of the evolution of population accessibility landscapes, at a national level and for several cities, and from a qualitative perspective with fieldwork observations. We confirm that rebalancing planning objectives are well achieved in terms of accessibility at both scales, when all planned lines will be achieved but already in a significant manner. We finally hypothesize possible paths for the coupled network-territory systems, given the extent without precedent of such mutations.