ACCESIBILIDAD DE LA POBLACIÓN A LAS AGLOMER ACIONES URBANAS DE LA PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA.

Prior to the development of infrastructure, space had a continuous character, given that the time it took to access a given place increased gradually with the distance to that place. Motorways and state highways have produced a contraction of space as far as road transport is concerned, due to the decrease in distance as measured in terms of time. However, this contraction has not been uniform across space. The main beneficiaries of the new spatial order are the nodes that link together trunk roads - which usually coincide with urban agglomerations -, insofar as they are connected to each other in quick and efficient ways. This gives rise to a new way of looking at the imbalances between the centre and the periphery - that is to say, between the main urban agglomerations and their regional hinterlands, as structured in an increasingly discontinuous space. As a consequence, the construction of new transport infrastructures (which are essential to socioeconomic development and to the articulation and integration of the various spaces and localities) can modify the population's spatial dynamics and accessibility levels, with crucial consequences in terms of regional development. With this in mind, this study proposes to analyse the current relationship between the development of transport infrastructures and accessibility in the case of the main urban agglomerations in the Iberian Peninsula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]