EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF NETWORK CONFIGURATION AND TRANSPORT ACCESSIBILITY ON POPULATION DYNAMICS. THE CASE OF NAXOS ISLAND, GREECE

Abstract

Transport is one of the most important factors which influence and largely determine an urban society’s spatial relations and interactions. Urban societies as socio-spatial systems are typically formed out of densely populated, well developed, productive and prosperous central areas and smaller settlements usually depended from one or more of the closest of the former. n terms of development and growth dynamics, road network lines are the basic arteries for the flow of people, economic resources and goods as well as information among places delineating to a large extent, the arrangement of transport relations and thus monocentric or polycentric organization of spatial systems. To this end, transport network quality and connectivity can generate a competitive advantage for specific locations/nodes i.e. settlements of the system. In this paper we utilize the space syntax method in order to explore the impact of transport network configuration and structure on population growth. We apply our methodology in order to describe, analyze and evaluate population dynamics of the settlements of Naxos Island, Greece for which their direct and significant correlation with accessibility is demonstrated.