Work

The built environment and multidimensional poverty: exploring accessibility as a mediator of spatial opportunity

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: While research has established links between the built environment and urban poverty, the mechanisms through which spatial opportunities influence multidimensional poverty remain poorly understood. This study examines how accessibility mediates the relationship between spatial opportunity and multidimensional poverty, while accounting for other built environment characteristics. Using household-level data, we applied structural equation modelling to analyse the complex pathways through which spatial opportunity affects poverty via accessibility, alongside considering the influence of density, design, distance to public transport, and diversity. The research reveals that accessibility plays a crucial mediating role, enabling spatial opportunities to translate into tangible reductions in multidimensional poverty. Specifically, while spatial opportunity alone may not guarantee poverty reduction, improvements in accessibility significantly enhance the potential positive impact of these opportunities. Furthermore, the study identifies distance to public transport as a factor positively associated with multidimensional poverty, and diversity exhibiting a negative association. The findings suggest that simply changing spatial opportunities may be insufficient for poverty reduction; accessibility plays a crucial mediating role that must be considered in urban interventions. The findings suggest that urban interventions aimed at poverty reduction should prioritise enhancing accessibility to existing and new spatial opportunities. This study advances our understanding of how built environment interventions can address urban poverty by highlighting the conditional importance of accessibility in shaping the relationship between spatial opportunities and poverty, and by underscoring the need for careful consideration of local context when designing urban interventions. • Examines how accessibility mediates the relationship between spatial opportunity and multidimensional poverty in urban areas. • Uses structural equation modelling to show that accessibility mediates spatial opportunities leading to decreased poverty • Shows that the built environment has varying associations with multidimensional poverty and predicts the health dimension. • Simply increasing spatial opportunities without accessibility may not yield poverty reduction goals in urban areas.

Source: Habitat International

DOI: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2025.103402

Authors: James Gachanja, Tianren Yang

Institution: University of Hong Kong

Language: English

Topic: Urban Transport and Accessibility

Subfield: Transportation

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Reduced inequalities, Sustainable cities and communities, No poverty, Good health and well-being

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,560