A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M. Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1981

An investigation was carried out to determine whether the accessibility shapes land use for Asian cities. The study was carried out on three major Asian cities; Bangkok, Jakarta and Bombay. Only accessibility to employment was considered. Air-line distances were taken as a measure of spatial separation. Residential and employment, the two major land use activities were taken into consideration. An exponential relationship was tested, with density of land use activity and centrality as the two variables, for all three cities. Centrality is a mathematical transformation of accessibility index. In all cases, strong correlations were found to exist between the variables. The correlations were stronger when regressed with employment densities. Further, studies were carried for all three cities, with later year data to determine the nature of changes taking place in the density-centrality relationship with time. For Bangkok, the second set of data were only available. An over all increase in densities were observed for Bangkok, while for the other two cities decrease in population densities for high density zones were indicated. To ascertain the distribution of accessibility to population and jobs, Gini coefficient was found out for each case. Distribution of accessibility to jobs for Bombay was found to be more uniform than all other cases. Also, the distributions in all cases, were found to become more uneven, with time.