Spatial intelligence guide
How to Create an Accessibility Map for an Architecture or Urban Planning Project
One of the most useful questions in early site analysis is:
What can people reach from this site?
A site may look well connected on a conventional map, but that does not necessarily tell you how accessible it is.
A railway station 800 metres away may be a 10-minute walk — or a 20-minute walk depending on the street network.
A park may appear close but be separated by a major road.
A school may be geographically nearby but outside a realistic walking route.
This is why accessibility maps are so useful for architects and urban planners.
Instead of measuring distance as a straight line, they show what can actually be reached.
What is an accessibility map?
An accessibility map shows the area that can be reached from a location within a defined amount of time or distance.
For example:
5-minute walk;
10-minute walk;
15-minute walk;
10-minute drive;
15-minute bike ride.
These areas are often represented as isochrones or catchment areas.
The result can be much more informative than a simple radius.
Scenario: analysing a new development site
Imagine you are evaluating a site for:
housing;
an office;
a school;
a mixed-use project;
a public facility.
You want to know whether the site is well connected to the surrounding city.
Instead of asking:
“What is within 1 km?”
ask:
“What can people reach within 10 minutes?”
That is a much more meaningful planning question.
Step 1 — Choose your starting point
Start with the project site.
Then decide whose accessibility you are analysing.
For example:
Residents
Walking access to:
shops;
schools;
parks;
transit;
healthcare.
Employees
Access to:
transit;
services;
restaurants;
commercial districts.
Visitors
Access to:
parking;
public transport;
destinations;
public spaces.
The same site can therefore have several different accessibility maps.
Step 2 — Choose a travel mode
Accessibility depends on how people move.
The most common modes are:
walking;
cycling;
driving;
public transport.
For early architectural analysis, walking is often the most intuitive starting point.
For example:
“Show everything reachable within 10 minutes walking from the site.”
This produces a very different result from:
“Show everything within 800 metres.”
Step 3 — Create a catchment area
A simple approach is to draw a circle around the site.
But a circle assumes people can travel in every direction equally.
Cities do not work that way.
Roads, paths, rivers, railways and barriers affect movement.
A network-based accessibility analysis instead follows the available routes.
The resulting shape may look irregular.
That irregularity is useful.
It reflects the actual structure of the movement network.
Step 4 — Add destinations
Once you have the accessibility area, add the destinations that matter.
For a residential project:
schools;
supermarkets;
pharmacies;
healthcare;
parks;
public transport.
For an office:
transit;
restaurants;
cafes;
services;
public spaces.
For urban planning:
civic facilities;
schools;
healthcare;
parks;
commercial areas.
The map now answers two questions simultaneously:
Where can people go?
and
What can they reach?
Example prompt
A natural-language request could be:
“Create a 10-minute walking accessibility map from this site and show schools, parks, supermarkets, healthcare facilities and public transport stops inside the catchment.”
Then you can refine it:
“Also show a 15-minute walking area.”
Or:
“Compare the 10-minute walking catchment with the location of public transport.”
This is much faster than manually building several GIS layers.
Compare 5, 10 and 15 minutes
For planning studies, multiple time thresholds can be particularly useful.
5 minutes
Immediate neighbourhood.
10 minutes
Local daily-access catchment.
15 minutes
Broader neighbourhood accessibility.
Instead of one arbitrary radius, you now have a gradient of accessibility.
This can help answer questions such as:
Is the site genuinely walkable?
Which amenities are accessible within 10 minutes?
How much of the surrounding neighbourhood falls within a 15-minute catchment?
Use accessibility to compare sites
This becomes particularly powerful when evaluating multiple locations.
Imagine three potential development sites.
Site A
Excellent transit access, but few nearby amenities.
Site B
Many amenities, but poor public transport.
Site C
Good transit and amenities, with a large walkable catchment.
A conventional map may make all three look similar.
An accessibility analysis makes the differences much clearer.
This is especially useful for:
site selection;
feasibility studies;
urban regeneration;
residential development;
public facilities.
Accessibility is not just about distance
A good accessibility analysis considers the network.
But there are other factors too.
Barriers
Railways, rivers and highways can make nearby destinations harder to reach.
Crossings
A major road may have only a few safe crossing points.
Network density
Fine-grained street networks generally create different walking patterns from large urban blocks.
Destination quality
Being able to reach something does not automatically mean it is an attractive destination.
These factors should be considered when interpreting the map.
Combine accessibility with demographics
For deeper analysis, combine accessibility with population data.
For example:
“Show the population within a 10-minute walk of this site.”
Now the map is no longer simply about infrastructure.
It starts to answer a demand question.
For residential development:
How many people already live within the catchment?
For retail:
How much population is within the target walking area?
For public facilities:
Which population groups are served?
Spatial analysis becomes much more useful when multiple layers are combined.
Combine accessibility with amenities
Another useful workflow is:
Site
↓
10-minute walking catchment
↓
Amenities inside catchment
↓
Count / classify
For example:
12 restaurants
3 supermarkets
4 schools
2 healthcare facilities
5 parks
The numbers alone do not determine whether a site is good.
But they provide a consistent basis for comparing locations.
Accessibility maps for urban planning
For urban planners, accessibility maps can reveal larger patterns.
For example:
neighbourhoods with poor access to parks;
areas underserved by public transport;
gaps in school accessibility;
communities far from healthcare;
areas with strong pedestrian connectivity.
This turns the same technique from a site analysis tool into an urban planning tool.
Instead of:
“What is accessible from this development site?”
you can ask:
“Which parts of the city are underserved?”
Exporting the analysis
An accessibility map can be useful as:
a presentation graphic;
a planning diagram;
a report;
a GIS layer;
a CAD reference.
If the underlying spatial geometry is available, you can export the catchment and continue working with it elsewhere.
This makes the analysis reusable rather than locked into a screenshot.
A simple accessibility workflow
1. Locate the site
Use the project address.
2. Choose the mode
Walking, cycling or driving.
3. Choose the time
5, 10 or 15 minutes.
4. Generate the catchment
Calculate the reachable area.
5. Add destinations
Transit, amenities, schools, parks, etc.
6. Analyse
Count, compare and identify gaps.
7. Export
Use the geometry in your planning or design workflow.
Final takeaway
A distance map asks:
“What is nearby?”
An accessibility map asks:
“What can people actually reach?”
That is a much more useful question for architecture and urban planning.
Start with one site, one travel mode and one time threshold.
For example:
10-minute walking catchment + public transport + parks + amenities.
Then add more complexity only when you have a specific planning question.
The goal is not to produce another complicated GIS map.
It is to understand how connected a place actually is.
FAQ
What is an accessibility map?
An accessibility map shows what can be reached from a site within a defined time or distance, often using isochrones or catchment areas.
Why are accessibility maps better than simple radius maps?
They follow real movement networks, so they show realistic walking, cycling, driving or transit reach instead of straight-line distance.
How do architects and planners use accessibility maps?
They use them to evaluate walkability, transit access, amenity reach, underserved areas and the practical connectivity of a site.
What practitioners say
“The accessibility map gave us a simple evidence base for why one entrance strategy worked better.”
— Maya, Project Architect
Further reading and resources
Continue with related Aino guides, product pages and documentation: