One may envision a network of consumers of spatial information, who require appropriate education including the skills to access. Research on the use and value of such access, and the ethics associated with access and privacy are clearly needed. This conference is concerned with changing conditions of accessibility, distance, and spatial interaction in cities. All interaction has a spatial dimension.
Accessibility implies the impact of communications on a network.
The concept's incorporation of decision making suggests the increasing interplay between the 'human dimension,' technical processes, and information flow. Robinson's 'relative location' can be theorized with respect to access to information, and how this might apply to GIS and urban planning. This observation applies well to marketing professionals or planners, for example, but does not hold with equal force for, say, homeless populations or inner-city working poor, for whom abstract spatial generalizations facilitated by GIS have little experiential point of purchase. Planners may claim that the information is available and ignore coming to terms with the fact that its inaccessibility to affected individuals and groups serves to reify the power of both planners and the state apparatus they serve. Access to ITs and spatial technologies should not be conflated with metaphors of literacy.