Accessibility of workers in a compact city: the case of Hong Kong

This article investigates the relationship between the accessibility of workers and the compact city structure in Hong Kong. We are particularly concerned with the influences of land-use policy and public transport systems development on the accessibility of workers. We construct a model which incorporates factors such as transfers in work trips, employment status, income, gender, marital status and living in accessible areas to account for the accessibility of workers. Our findings show that whether a worker lives in an accessible area or not does not affect his or her accessibility, rather transfers in work trips have the greatest impact, indicating that variability in accessibility to jobs is different in a compact city structure with a hierarchical transport network from that in cities in Europe and the US. Although income is not a significant factor affecting the accessibility of workers, workers in Hong Kong have to bear high travel costs on transfers. Also noteworthy is the finding that married workers spend longer times on work trips than the workers who are single. It might be attributed to the fact that a high proportion of households employ foreign domestic helpers to take care of their housework so that they could spend more time on work trips. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.