Investigating the Social Dimensions of Transport Disadvantage—I. Towards New Concepts and Methods 1 JAGO DODSON, NICK BUCHANAN, BRENDAN GLEESON & NEIL SIPE Urban Research Program, Griffith University, Nathan Campus, Brisbane, Australia (Received 7 September 2005; accepted 1 September 2006) ABSTRACT This article is the first of two papers that engage critically and productively with the relationship between the socio-economic transformations of cities, the differentiation of vulnerable groups within urban space and the distribution of transport services. This article undertakes a comprehensive review of the major conceptual and methodological approaches by which scholars and policy researchers have sought to address the connection between social disadvantage and access to transport. The article critically assesses the relative merits of various spatial analytical methodologies in illuminating social – transport links. The study finds that there is a need for greater sophistication in the use of analytical methods in transport research as well as an imperative for greater sensitivity to social differentiation within urban areas and relative to infrastructure and services. The article concludes by developing a method for combining spatial social and transport service data that is then deployed in the empirical case study reported in the second paper. KEY WORDS: Transport, social exclusion, urban planning, disadvantage, infrastructure Introduction Access to transport systems and the connection such systems provide to essential economic and social activities is a critical dimension of households’ socio-economic wellbeing. However, in spite of ongoing social and economic changes in recent decades, scholars have been slow to draw the link between mobility, transport and social outcomes. This article is the first of two papers that undertake a comprehensive conceptual and methodological review of the ways scholars have contemplated the connection between transport disadvantage and social status. We show that transport and mobility are crucial components of social accessibility, and develop this argument in the second article via an empirical examination of the Gold Coast City. Our assessment demonstrates the critical importance of methodological capacities to illuminate the links between transport accessibility and social disadvantage. We suggest that while there are various 0811-1146 Print/1476-7244 Online/06/040433-21 q 2006 Editorial Board, Urban Policy and Research DOI: 10.1080/08111140601035317 Correspondence Address: Jago Dodson, Urban Research Program, Griffith University, Nathan Campus, Brisbane, QLD, 4111, Australia. Email: j.dodson@griffith.edu.au Urban Policy and Research, Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, December 2006