The urban accessibility (UA) classification measures the degree of urban influence New Zealand’s urban areas have on surrounding rural areas. It classifies the geographic accessibility of rural statistical area 1s (SA1s) and small urban areas according to their proximity, or degree of remoteness, to larger urban areas. This classification provides increased understanding of the heterogeneity of rural areas and small urban areas and will allow more extensive analysis and reporting. Understanding the degree of urban accessibility or remoteness is important as it has a major influence on the employment sector, accessibility to services, and population composition and change.
The methodology uses drive time from an SA1 address weighted centroid to the outside boundary of the nearest major, large, and medium urban area (from Stats NZ urban rural (UR) classification) to classify rural SA1s and small urban areas to one of five categories of accessibility or remoteness. The Open Source Routing Machine service using the OpenStreetMap road network is used to calculate the drive times.
A concordance between SA1 and Urban Accessibility can be found on Aria.
Urban accessibility indicator is also available as an attribute on Statistical Area 1 Higher Geographies 2021 (generalised).
Rural SA1s and small urban areas are classified to the following categories:
·High urban accessibility:
0 to15 minutes from major urban areas
·Medium urban accessibility:
15 to 25 minutes from major urban areas
0 to 25 minutes from large urban areas
0 to 15 minutes from medium urban areas
·Low urban accessibility:
25 to 60 minutes from major or large urban areas
15 to 60 minutes from medium urban areas
·Remote:
60 to 120 minutes from major, large or medium urban areas
·Very remote:
more than 120 minutes from major, large or medium urban areas
For more information refer to: Urban accessibility - methodology and classification.
The full classification is shown below:
111 Major urban area
112 Large urban area
113 Medium urban area
221 High urban accessibility
222 Medium urban accessibility
223 Low urban accessibility
224 Remote
225 Very remote
331 Inland water
332 Inlet
333 Oceanic
Areas of 221 High urban accessibility and 222 Medium urban accessibility may be regarded as peri-urban in nature and combined with urban areas for analytical purposes.
This generalised version has been simplified for rapid drawing and is designed for thematic or web mapping purposes.
Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.
