Urban mobility in transition: the impact of free-floating car sharing- exemplified by the case of driveNow in Lisbon

Car sharing is introduced as an innovative, technology-driven mobility service to Lisbon’s existing mobility mix, thus providing a mechanism to the growing transportation challenges the city is facing today. Urbanization and dominating motorized travel have come at economic, environmental, and social costs that car sharing aims to compensate and even reverse. The present thesis develops a theoretical framework – building on the concepts of urban mobility, automotive disruption as well as environmental pressures – to assist in gaining and improving the understanding of car sharing. Further, it discusses its implications including car ownership reduction and accompanying side effects and ultimately, necessary measures are recommended to accelerate the adoption rate of car sharing among consumers, and with that, its expected benefits

"Boom without limits?" – An analysis of the Stuttgart real estate market

Real estate markets are known to fluctuate. The real estate market in Stuttgart, Germany, has been booming for more than a decade: square-meter price hit top levels and real estate agents claim that market prices will continue to increase. In this paper, we test this market understanding by developing and analyzing a system dynamics model that depicts the Stuttgart real estate market. Simulating the model explains oscillating behavior arising from significant time delays and endogenous feedback structures – and not necessarily oscillating interest rates, as market experts assume. Scenarios provide insights into the system's behavior reacting to changes exogenous to the model. The first scenario tests the market development under increasing interest rates. The other scenario deals with possible effects on the real estate market if the regional automotive economy suffers from intense competition with new market players entering with alternative fuel vehicles and new technologies. With a policy run we test market structure changes to eliminate cyclical effects. The paper confirms that the business cycle in the Stuttgart real estate market arises from within the system's underlying structure, thus emphasizing the importance of understanding feedback structures