Trends — Reader Urban Mobility
This is part of a Reader on Urban Mobility to help people get into the topic and gain insight into what is being observed and discussed around the world. I thought I share this as I go and hope for feedback, comments and suggestions.
So That’s What Flying Cars Are For | Flight Today | Air & Space Magazine
A century ago, in the 1920s, Henry Ford — following is reported to have said, “Mark my words. A combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile. But it will come.” A hundred years later, a myriad of prototypes are taking to the skies. The Air & Space Magazine has a comprehensive overview.
https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/13_sep2018-so-s-what-flying-cars-are-180969917/
Transportation — CityLab
Richard Florida has written several books on Cities and what he calls “the creative class”. He’s also co-founder & Editor at Large of the online publication “CityLab”. Here’s their collection of articles on transportation with topics like “Is Uber the Enemy or Ally of Public Transit?”
Self-driving cars | Technology | The Guardian
Every article published in The Guardian online on the topic of driverless cars. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/self-driving-cars
‘Living laboratories’: the Dutch cities amassing data on oblivious residents
Dutch cities Eindhoven and Utrecht use so called smart tech trying to tackle traffic, noise and crime. In the eastern city of Enschede, city traffic sensors pick up your phone’s wifi signal even if you are not connected to the wifi network. The city council wants to know how often people visit Enschede, and what their routes and preferred spots are. With privacy laws proving futile and commercial companies in on the act, are the plans as benign as they seem?
Cities for Mobility
In the global network Cities for Mobility, Stuttgart and other Cities “search for policies and concrete measures towards sustainable mobility — meaning a mobility which is accessible to all, environmentally friendly and human-centered. Stuttgart, the capital of the Southern German Federal State of Baden-Wuerttemberg and home to several car-makers, forms with about 600,000 inhabitants the centre of the Stuttgart Region, which boasts in total 2.7 million inhabitants and employs 1 million people. In this network, it also hosts a biannual congress. Their news section offers a wide variety of topics to explore, like news on the “World Parking Symposium — June 2018 in Berlin” or “The battle for street space”.
News — Cities for Mobility — The world wide network for urban mobility
What’s trending in smart mobility — our list for 2018 — Helsinki Business Hub
The Helsinki Business Hub team tries to keep track of what they call the “smart” side (as in “Smart”-Phone…) of mobility. Their trends page is a good jump-off point for some other interesting reading.
https://www.helsinkibusinesshub.fi/whats-trending-in-smart-mobility-our-list-for-2018/
Dont’t touch my Vespa
We will have to give up on things and habits that we once have cherished. This is the message from Genoa, where the iconic scooter that helped create the image of Italy in the last decades will have to move on.
13 CITIES THAT ARE STARTING TO BAN CARS
How can cities create more space for pedestrians and lower CO2 emissions from vehicles? Here are 13 cities leading the car-free movement.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/03/13-cities-that-are-starting-to-ban-cars/
‘For me, this is paradise’: life in the Spanish city that banned cars
Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores has been mayor of the Galician city Pontevedra since 1999. His philosophy is simple: owning a car doesn’t give you the right to occupy the public space: “How can it be that the elderly or children aren’t able to use the street because of cars?” asks César Mosquera, the city’s head of infrastructures. “How can it be that private property — the car — occupies the public space?”
‘I leave the car at home’: how free buses are revolutionising one French city
Dunkirk is the biggest European city to offer entirely free public transport to residents and visitors alike. So what do people think?
MaaS Global — Mobilty as a Service
MaaS Global calls itself the “world’s first Mobility-as-a-Service operator” and aims to “globally revolutionise the way people move”. Their Whim app, they claim, is the world’s first mobility service which allows users to book and pay for all mobility services in one app for one monthly fee. MaaS Global’s Whim mobility service currently operates in Helsinki region in Finland, West Midlands in UK and Antwerp in Belgium. They have recently received €9 million in funding from investors.
Swapfiets — Another take on “Mobility as a service”
This is service that let’s you rent a bike for a monthly flat fee. If the bike breaks (or get’s stolen), you’ll be provided with a new one. “Swapfiets” is a English-Flemish neologism, “-fiets” being the Flemish (and Dutch) word for bicycle.
This is part of a Reader on Urban Mobility to help people get into the topic, what is being observed and discussed around the world. I thought I share this as I go and hope for feedback, comments and suggestions.
Go back to the main article for an overview.