THE USE OF TIME IN NEARBY AREAS. A CHARACTERIZATION OF THE CITY OF BARCELONA (2006)

The city offers many opportunities to interact with people and activities. The duo proximity-attractivity is relevant to study, under the approach of the time that citizens spend in such activities. This is the aim of the study, the methodology applied time geography and activity chain approach. The novelty of the method is the more realistically view of the behavior of the use of time and spaces in the city. The method was applied to household travel survey of Barcelona. The results show that the nearby activity durations are smaller than the no nearby. The proximity generates more activities in the daily activity chain, changing the paradigm of trade-off between access time and duration, with the trade-off between access time and number of activities. The final conclusion is that proximity has a relative value, from a clear environmental sustainability, to a probable de-socialization of activities.