Accessibility of low-income workers in Hong Kong

The accessibility of low-income workers in Hong Kong is a function of dynamic economic growth, compact city structure and efficient operation of public transport. Although 42 per cent of the Hong Kong population lives in the new towns, and among them, four in 10 have to travel to work in the urban areas where service jobs are available, the influence of spatial mismatch between jobs and housing on workers in the city centre is minimized due to efficient operation of public transportation. Using travel time to work as an indicator, our study finds that the compact city structure of Hong Kong maintains more equality of accessibility to work among low-income workers with different characteristics (such as employment status and whether they are from two-worker households) than in cities of Europe and the United States. It is also found that the trade-off theory of accessibility is not as sensitive in Hong Kong as in cities in the US because of the high performance of public transport and small travel time differences between the low-income workers who live in new towns and in the urban areas in Hong Kong. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.