Urban expansion and social exclusion. Analysis of the accessibility of the residents of the city of Rio de Janeiro to the labor market

Urban sprawl has changed the pattern of population displacement. People now inhabit less urbanized regions, spending more time in public transports to have access to the city's facilities. In this context, this research focuses on measuring the job accessibility of different areas of Rio de Janeiro city to understand what would be the influence of people's location and public transports availability. We used a cumulative opportunity indicator to measure the accessibility of the 33 Administrative Regions of Rio de Janeiro. The results show an unequal distribution of accessibility, in which the farthest regions from the urban center have less accessibility, due the high concentration of jobs in the city center and the greater distances between the city center and peripheral areas. Thus, investments in public transportation must be done as a parallel measure to the decentralization and improvement of job distribution throughout the city to improve accessibility.