Personal Geographies in GIS: New Approaches to Analyse Accessibility to Public Services

This paper presents the results of two complementary studies undertaken in the city of Alcala de Henares, Spain. The main objective was to analyse accessibility to public services from the users’ personal circumstances and perception of the environment. The paper provides information on the methodology adopted to include cognitive distances and time budgets into a GIS database. It summarises both cartographic and numeric results and concludes with a discussion on future developments in this area. The main outcomes of the study include: (a) the demonstration that personal geographies can be handled and analysed using GIS technology, (b) a personal approach to the analysis of spatiotemporal accessibility, and (c) the development of a set of innovative cartographic representations.