Conscious mobility for urban spaces: case studies review and indicator framework design

A lack of data collection on conscious mobility behaviors has been identified in current sustainable and smart mobility planning, development and implementation strategies. This leads to technocentric solutions that do not place people and their behavior at the center of new mobility solutions in urban centers around the globe. This paper introduces the concept of conscious mobility to link techno-economic analyses with user awareness on the impact of their travel decisions on other people, local urban infrastructure and the environment through systematic big data collection. A preliminary conscious mobility indicator framework is presented to leverage behavioral considerations to enhance urban-community mobility systems. Key factors for conscious mobility analysis have been derived from five case studies. The sample offers regional diversity (i.e., local, regional and the global urban contexts), as well as different goals in the transformation of conventional urban transport systems, from improving public transport efficiency and equipment electrification to mitigate pollution and climate risks, to focusing on equity, access and people safety. The case studies selected provide useful metrics on the adoption of cleaner, smarter, safer and more autonomous mobility technologies, along with novel people-centric program designs to build an initial set of conscious mobility indicators frameworks. The parameters were applied to the city of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon in Mexico focusing on the needs of the communities that work, study and live around the local urban campus of the Tecnologico de Monterrey’s Distrito Tec. This case study, served as an example of how conscious mobility indicators could be applied and customized to a community and region of interest. This paper introduces the first application of the conscious mobility framework for urban communities’ mobility system analysis. This more holistic assessment approach includes dimensions such as society and culture, infrastructure and urban spaces, technology, government, normativity, economy and politics, and the environment. The expectation is that the conscious mobility framework of analysis will become a useful tool for smarter and sustainable urban and mobility problem solving and decision making to enhance the quality of life all living in urban communities

Assessing Urban Accessibility in Monterrey, Mexico: A Transferable Approach to Evaluate Access to Main Destinations at the Metropolitan and Local Levels

Cities demand urgent transformations in order to become more affordable, livable, sustainable, walkable and comfortable spaces. Hence, important changes have to be made in the way cities are understood, diagnosed and planned. The current paper puts urban accessibility into the centre of the public policy and planning agenda, as a transferable approach to transform cities into better living environments. To do so, a practical example of the City of Monterrey, Mexico, is presented at two planning scales: the metropolitan and local level. Both scales of analysis measure accessibility to main destinations using walking and cycling as the main transport modes. The results demonstrate that the levels of accessibility at the metropolitan level are divergent, depending on the desired destination, as well as on the planning processes (both formal and informal) from different areas of the city. At the local level, the Distrito Tec Area is diagnosed in terms of accessibility to assess to what extent it can be considered a part of a 15 minutes city. The results show that Distrito Tec lacks the desired parameters of accessibility to all destinations for being a 15 minutes city. Nevertheless, there is a considerable increase in accessibility levels when cycling is used as the main travelling mode. The current research project serves as an initial approach to understand the accessibility challenges of the city at different planning levels, by proving useful and disaggregated data. Finally, it concludes providing general recommendations to be considered in planning processes aimed to improve accessibility and sustainability

Assessing Sustainable Development Goals: a transferable approach using contour accessibility measures at the example of Berlin and Mexico City

This study uses accessibility measures to assess the quality of infrastructure supply (schools, parks, public transport stops in the regarded cases) and the performance of the transportation system in urban areas, based on objective, quantitative values. Within the scope of this work the methodology is applied to the city of Berlin and Mexico City as examples. Fine-grained data on the level of single households and the positions of single activity locations is used as well as a detailed road network representation and a description of public transport offers. The results show that accessibility measures are valuable input parameters for urban planning activities by showing under-supply of travel options and of important facilities on a highly disaggregated level. Furthermore, the outcomes demonstrate that the applied method is feasible to benchmark the accessibility of urban areas in regard to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) formulated by UNHABITAT

Wo fehlt was? - Bestimmung unterversorgter Gebiete mittels Erreichbarkeitsmaßen

Erreichbarkeitsmaße verschieben den Fokus der Betrachtung des Mobilitätsangebots auf die Verteilung der Aktivitäten im Raum und die Möglichkeiten des Erreichens dieser mittels verschiedener Verkehrsträger und -modi. Sie werden als Paradigmenwechsel zugunsten einer umweltfreundlichen Mobilität angesehen. Doch werden Erreichbarkeitsmaße oft mit komplexen, teilweise modellgestützten Annahmen angereichert und zumeist in Choroplethen dargestellt, wodurch eine einfache Interpretation der Ergebnisse in der Praxis nicht immer gewährleistet ist. Dieser Artikel beschreibt eine Methode zur Verarbeitung von Erreichbarkeitsmaßen mit dem Ziel, Bereiche mit potentiell unzureichender Versorgung auf eine leicht verständliche Art und Weise quantitativ zu erfassen und darzustellen

The Importance of Robust Datasets to Assess Urban Accessibility: A Comparable Study in the Distrito Tec, Monterrey, Mexico, and the Stanford District, San Francisco Bay Area, USA

Urban planning has a crucial role in helping cities meet the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals and robust datasets to assess mobility accessibility are central to smart urban planning. These datasets provide the information necessary to perform detailed analyses that help develop targeted urban interventions that increase accessibility in cities as related to the emerging vision of the 15 Minute City. This study discusses the need for such data by performing a comparative urban accessibility analysis of two university campuses and their surrounding urban areas, here defined as the Stanford District, located in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States, and Distrito Tec in Monterrey, Mexico. The open-source tool Urban Mobility Accessibility Computer (UrMoAC) is used to assess accessibility measures in each district using available data. UrMoAC calculates distances and average travel times from block groups to major destinations using different transport modes considering the morphology of the city, which makes this study transferable and scalable. The results show that both areas have medium levels of accessibility if cycling is used as the primary mode of transportation. Hence, improving the safety and quality of cycling in both cities emerges as one of the main recommendations from the research. Finally, the results obtained can be used to generate public policies that address the specific needs of each community's urban region based on their accessibility performance