The Geography of Access

Speaker: Dr. Alexander Michels
Assistant Professor – Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas

Date & Time: Thursday, November 12, 2026 • 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM (ET)

Abstract

We often think of “environment” as the place where we live, but our environment is really everywhere we have access to: our workplaces, the stores we shop at, the parks we walk in, and the space in between. This talk introduces spatial accessibility as a geographic framework for quantifying that broader environment. We’ll start by unpacking what “access” actually means, before turning to how geographers measure it, from simple supply-to-population ratios to gravity-based models and the Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) method. We’ll look at real-world applications, from food deserts to healthcare access during COVID-19 before moving to ongoing work tackling the next challenges in this space: measuring access at scale, incorporating mobility data and machine-learned travel times, and using AI to fill gaps in what we know about the places we study.