Background

Sponsored by the Institute for Mobility Research (ifmo), a research facility of BMW Group, Technische Universität München (TUM) in cooperation with Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main has been supervising a fellowship program on the topic of “Mobility Cultures in Megacities”. We were pleased to welcome eight international post-doctoral researchers of various disciplines such as
transport research, planning, history and social sciences from cities representing different city clusters determined in a preliminary study.

Objectives

The general objective of the fellowship program “Mobility Cultures in Megacities” was to improve our understanding of mobility patterns and cultures in megacities in order to be able to identify challenges for the future of urban mobility. Based upon a preliminary study and recognizing the dynamics of change in the transportation system and in people’s mobility patterns the key research interests of the program were:

  • Identifying the characteristics, opportunities and constraints of specific cities like demographic, social, economic and regulatory conditions
  • Analyzing long-term mobility decisions like location choice, motorization
  • Studying every-day mobility patterns like activity-chains, mode and destination choices as well as underlying social motivations
  • Investigating lifestyles, perceptions and attitudes in the respective cities and their “points of entry” in order to learn if and how they might change over time
  • Assessing stakeholder interaction, local planning and policy discourses and their cultural background in order to develop perspectives for “good governance“

Acadamic Partners

mobil.TUM
Prof. Dr. Sven Kesselring
Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main
Institute for Human Geography
Prof. Dr. Martin Lanzendorf
Guest Prof. Jeffrey Kenworthy

Sponsor

Institute for Mobility Research (ifmo)
A Research Facility of BMW Group

Duration

January 2011 - March 2012

Contact

Dipl.-Ing. Roland Priester
Phone: +49.89.289.22510
Email: roland.priester@tum.de