The relationship between population, employment and accessibility in London Margarethe Theseira and Andrew Crooks GLA Economics City Hall The Queen’s Walk London SE1 2AA Tel: +44 (0) 207 983 4198 margarethe.theseira@london.gov.uk www.london.gov.uk/mayor/economic_unit 1. Introduction London’s population is projected to increase by around 810,000 to 8.1 million by 2016 (Greater London Authority, 2004) and based on past employment trends the number of jobs in London is projected to increase by 541,000 jobs between 2002 and 2016 (GLA Economics, 2004). It is expected that an increase in population within an area will lead to an increase in jobs for servicing the local population such as in health centres, gyms, shops through to estate agents. The Greater London Authority is interested in quantifying the association between jobs, population and accessibility to determine what employment opportunities may arise with the planned development of large tracts of land for housing purposes. Previous analysis based on ward level data for London demonstrated how complicated it is to identify this association and concluded that in areas of low accessibility, an increase to the resident population of 1000 will on average have the potential to give rise to a further 230 jobs in the locality (GLA Economics, 2005). In this paper, we use update employment data and extend the existing analysis to determine what would happen if the underlying geographic unit of measurement for this analysis is changed from administrative boundaries to a functional unit area boundaries. The underlying geographies used to develop associations between population, employment and accessibility are ward level data (as in the original study) and London Transport Studies Model (LTS) Zones. Ward boundaries are administrative based area definitions whereas the London Transport Studies Model is a functional unit based on transport use. For London there are 877 LTS zones and 782 wards. 2. Employment and population Figure 1 plots the relationship between employment and population density for London at ward level (Figure 1A) and by LTS zones (Figure 1B). 1 It can be seen that the majority of 1 Based on 1991 ward definitions. Employment data from the 2003 Annual Business Inquiry. Population data from 2001 census.