Reverse the thinking for better accessibility

Providing people in rural areas and smaller urban centres with access to public services, shops, and healthcare is challenging. Distances can be long, not everyone has access to a car, and public transport is not as well developed as in cities.

This project studies how accessibility can be increased by reversing the thinking and allowing different types of public services to come to the residents instead of the residents having to travel to reach the service.

Examples of such “reverse-thinking solutions” include a specialist doctor coming to the local health centre regularly, automated and 24-hour grocery stores, or sparsely populated municipalities collaborating on digital education. Such solutions can contribute to greater social, environmental and economic sustainability.

Several case studies

The project will conduct five or six case studies in municipalities where reverse-thinking solutions have been successfully implemented. The ongoing project builds on a previous study, Fair Accessibility for rural areas and small towns, which showed that many municipalities and regions have tested various solutions based on spatial proximity and digitalisation instead of travel to increase accessibility.

The project also looks internationally to neighbouring Norway and Finland to find out how other countries - with similar conditions - organise services for good accessibility in less densely populated areas.

Questions that the project wants to answer are:

• What types of solutions bring public services to residents that municipalities and regions are working with today?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages for providers and users?
• Who benefits from such a development, and who is disadvantaged? How the solutions contribute to social sustainability is analysed, as the solutions’ usefulness may vary between social groups and contexts.
• What can municipalities and public authorities do to support the implementation of more reverse-thinking solutions?
• What are the benefits and costs of investing in such solutions compared to solutions where accessibility is created through increased mobility?