Accessibility analysis
Measuring how easily people can reach the places they need, such as schools, jobs, healthcare and green space, from where they live.
Accessibility analysis, in German Erreichbarkeitsanalyse, measures how easily people can reach the destinations they need from where they are. Schools, jobs, doctors, shops, green space. It combines three things: where people are, where the destinations are, and how long it takes to travel between them.
It is not the same as counting facilities. A district with four playgrounds can be worse served than a district with two, if the four sit at one edge and the two sit in the middle. Accessibility analysis is the step that turns provision into experience, because it asks who can reach what rather than how much exists.
There are many methods, and they answer different questions. The simplest asks what lies within a catchment area. Others measure the average travel time to the nearest few destinations, weight destinations by size or attractiveness, or bring supply and demand together so that a facility serving thousands of people counts differently from one serving dozens. Choosing the method is part of the analysis, not a technical detail, so state which one you used and where you set the thresholds.