Interactions between new mobility concepts and urban space
The car in the city has remained a matter of course; only very gradually is the bicycle conquering a place in the city; pedestrians are often left with only the pedestrian zone in the city centre as the place where walking has priority.
In order to push back the dominance of the car, measures have been and are being implemented in cities that, on the one hand, make the use of the private car unattractive and, on the other hand, provide and promote environmentally friendly and, above all, less space-consuming mobility alternatives. In addition to traditional public transport and cycling, these include the shared use of vehicles, especially in the context of car or ridesharing.
The simultaneously growing discussion on the redistribution of public space is accompanied nationally and internationally by diverse experiments that make the changed urban space tangible and give people a direct impression of how less traffic can create more quality of life.
Using examples from Germany and Europe, Barbara Lenz will show in the lecture which ideas and options are behind the term "new mobility concepts" and which framework conditions are necessary for their success, but above all for the expected effect on public space and traffic in the city.
Barbara Lenz was Director of the DLR Institute for Transport Research in Berlin until the beginning of 2021. At the same time, she taught and researched as a professor of transport geography at Humboldt University in Berlin. Her more recent research focuses on the acceptance of new technologies in the transport sector, especially automation, the transformation of the transport sector and informal transport in developing countries.
She has been involved in various national, European and international bodies for years, such as the 6th EU-US Transport Research Symposium "Socio-economic Impacts of Automated and Connected Vehicles" in 2018, the EU Transport Advisory Group and the EU Advisory Board on Gender Issues; she is currently a member of the EU Mission Board on Climate Neutral and Smart Cities. Since 2019, she has chaired one of six working groups of the German National Platform for the Future of Mobility and is a member of the Expert Commission on the Federal Government's Monitoring Report "Energy of the Future".
DLR Institute of Transport Research
The Institute of Transport Research in Berlin-Adlershof is one of four research institutes in the Transport programme area of the German Aerospace Center. The Berlin institute's research is based on a holistic, systemic approach that focuses on people as actors.
The central topics include the transport behaviour of individuals and households, the acceptance of new technologies and mobility concepts, such as automated driving, urban mobility and mobility in the periphery of cities, but also economic and freight transport within cities, nationally and internationally.
Lecture in German
photo © Hoffotografen Lenz
