Scenarios of developing sustainable urban living environments and the role of mobility

Abstract

The aim of urban development strategies to make cities safe, resilient and sustainable is directly intertwined with mobility concepts. While benefits of active mobility (walking and cycling) as well as access to public transport are generally well-recognised, in planning practise and concepts, urban development is frequently taking place without considering the association with individual mobility patterns. Current debates and plans of intra-urban development versus suburban development are rarely taking into account the effect on urban mobility and the associated challenges (e.g. traffic, noise pollution, and air quality). The aim of this poster is to present a sustainability analysis of planned urban development and an analysis of projected future mobility patterns. We focus on a local study area in the suburban district Adlershof of Berlin that has been subject to rapid development in recent years and further planned developments in the future. We use different datasets to evaluate environmental (such as NDVI to capture greenness, noise, and pollution) and social indicators (e.g. crime data) to characterize and compare different aspects of sustainability of the existing and planned urban development in a spatially explicit multi-criteria analysis. We define different scenarios, varying the weights for more social or ecological preferences and evaluate the areas according to these scenarios. Moreover, we use data from a mobility survey we conducted in Adlershof with detailed information on mobility patterns. Finally, we apply an ABM (TAPAS) and microsimulation (SUMO) to model future transport demand for different modes of transport (cycling, PT, car) and the expected traffic load in the network. Our findings identify maps and distinct plots according to the social and ecological preferences. Most sustainable areas for housing development are identified. The impact of the expected growth in the area on the transport system is estimated and related concerns are discussed. Finally, we identify future key research challenges: How can we combine spatially explicit urban land use development models and scenarios with mobility models? Which role can scenario-analysis play for discussing current urban development strategies. With our analysis we show how important the intertwined perspective from urban development and mobility concepts is and that indicator- and model-based approaches can provide important insights for different urban scenarios.