The Potential Of The Traffic Transformation For The Housing Market

Abstract

More housing due to the traffic transformation? How could the city look like after the traffic transformation? Could the traffic transformation deliver the potential to re-shape the built environment in our cities, which was for about a century shaped by car-friendly urban- and transport planning? My research project examines interdisciplinary the potential of the traffic transformation towards sustainable modes of transport, for the redesign of the built urban environment. “The distribution of urban mobility space and its “fairness” has so far not been quantified both rigorously and on large scale”. Research so far, focused on the relationship between road space consumption per mode of transport to modal share and gives evidence that the distribution of space is inappropriate to the actual modal shares. However, academia so far neglected the off-street land consumption of the automobile infrastructure and the related potentials for the re-design of cities. Automobile off-street infrastructure is occupying urban areas through petrol stations, washing facilities, garages, car dealerships, car rentals and parking infrastructure. My work assesses the current space consumption and investigates how much of this space could become redundant and re-used for housing when cities become carbon neutral, which includes the needed modal shift towards sustainable and therefore space efficient modes of transport.