Towards a Zero-Emission Urban Mobility Urban design as a mitigation strategy, harmonizing insights from research and practice

Overview & Synopsis

The doctoral thesis explores how urban design can be a mobility-mitigation strategy to promote the use of zero-emission modes such as walking, cycling, and public transport. What is the potential contribution of neighbourhood-scale built-environment interventions towards a sustainable modal shift? The work explores the experience-based knowledge of urban design practitioners (urban planners and designers, architects, landscape architects) as a source for new insights, complementary to those of research. A mixed-methods approach was employed in France and in Norway, consisting of workshops, interviews, and a survey. The results were crossed with findings from research and design literature, analyzed from an interdisciplinary, holistic perspective. The results show that achieving a permanent modal shift requires the use of zero-emission choices to be both possible and pleasurable. The influence of urban design is likely most significant during trips, when a person moves through a city and its public spaces. Interactions with the neighbourhood-scale built environment influences overall travel satisfaction, and the remembered trip experience matters for future modal choices. Modal choices are highly individual; people’s barriers for a zero-emission choice vary. Urban design interventions can help lower these, through bigger or smaller measures.