MOBITAT 2050 Living and Working 2050 - Sustainable Mobility for Commuters of the Future

© David J. Engel - pixx.io

Background

Large cities in Germany have been experiencing strong population growth for years. This development is accompanied by both positive and negative effects for cities. The influx of young and employable people in particular is a major benefit for cities. At the same time, problems are emerging, such as the increasing shortage of affordable housing. An increasing amount of people in urban areas is always accompanied by more traffic and the associated negative effects, such as noise, air pollutants and spatial separation effects.

Strong population growth, the scarcity and rising cost of urban housing, and the desire, especially among families, to live in a green environment with simultaneous proximity to urban infrastructure have led to increasing distances between residential and workplace locations. The frequent location of the home and workplace in different communities has increased the length of commutes and the associated importance of the car in the past.

Project

In the MOBITAT 2050 project, a viable concept for regions of the future is to be developed through the integrated consideration of living, working and transport. For this purpose, a transferable set of tools will be developed that can be used to analyse the effects of digitization and automation on commuting behavior, taking into account residential and workplace choice. The methodological core of the project is the development of an integrated model that considers transport decisions as a function of residential and workplace location choices and is sensitive to measures. The basis for building the models is comprehensive empirical analysis of people's decision-making behaviour, including surveys, focus groups as well as behavioural experiments. As part of a comprehensive sustainability assessment, environmental and social effects of the measures developed in the project are analysed. Building on the model-based insights gained, options for action will be drawn up for shaping a sustainable region of the future.

The city-regional model project is being developed using the Frankfurt-Rhine-Main metropolitan region as an example. This region has particularly strong commuter links, and Frankfurt is the city with the most commuters in Germany.

Development of a sustainability assessment

The focus of ifeu's work is the development and testing of a methodology for sustainability assessment. In addition to ecological aspects, social and economic aspects of commuting mobility as well as the choice of living and working locations influencing it are included. Objective is to provide a methodology for sustainability assessment that can also be transferred to other regions with selected indicators, which can be collected with little effort.

The sustainability assessment should be applicable for the status quo of commuting mobility in the region as well as for scenarios with different measures. For this purpose, it will be linked to the integrated model network of living, working and transport models.