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Smart Urban Mobility

Arjan van Timmeren AMS Institute
Tom Kuipers Amsterdam Institute for Advanced
Metropolitan Solutions

21
The world has shifted its attention to cities in a new dimension: billions
of government funding targeting smart city initiatives and large industry
players centering their growth strategies and investment plans on
frameworks tackling urban solutions. An urban-ban-centric position is
being assumed by a variety of stakeholders engaging with a leapfrog
related to sustainable development, better
use of resources and infrastructures, improved equity, government
transparency, quality of life and the technological innovation and
urban dynamics among others.
One of the biggest challenges for urbanizing cities all over the world is to ensure that
urban environments match basic humans
needs in order to provide good quality of life. However, cities often
perform poorly when it comes to creating environments that are safe,
inclusive and healthy and provide sufficient space for social interaction
and daily (physical) activity and all mobility related to
that.
(Train) Stations, from their introduction in the nineteenth century
Preface
on, have played a key-role in sustaining and adapting such urban
dynamics and balancing diverse aspects within the fragile balance, or
reciprocity, between cities and their hinterlands, between people and
place. Although the main functionalities of the (train) station remain,
the role of the station within the urban system has changed and both
station and the mobility system are becoming increasingly complex.
With new modes of transport, growing volumes of passengers and
goods a more personal, adaptive approach towards traveling (MaaS,
Mobility as a Service), and the availability of information and data, the
station is -more than before- becoming a hub in our daily life.
The increasing deployment of digital technologies in urban space and
particularly mobility (concepts) is allowing a new approach to the study
of the built environment and the conception of urban solutions. The
way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed
as are the tools we use to design, plan and manage them. This
development opens up the opportunity for the emergence of a new
field of research and development in applied technology, at the
crossroad of the physical and digital sides of the urban
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domain. Nevertheless, effective designs for metropolitan solutions in

general go beyond technology, involving the entire socio-technical -
cal system, including social engagement, policy development and
financial engineering.
Mobility hubs, such as railway stations can be considered con -
densed representations of this, as they have become much more than
transfer points. They are 'places to be', both for mobility and non-
mobility related facilities and activities, and not only places to pass
through. They attract investments and play an essential role in urban
development strategies of their surroundings. Within a delicate balance
22 of 'costs and benefits' this approach makes such developments more
complex by the day. Together with the more recent rise of the 'smart'
station concept and the use of new technology -
nologies, the topic of (train) stations of the future has become one of
the main joint focuses and projects within the collaboration be -
tween AMS Institute (The Netherlands) with Paris (France).
In this context, the 'small' metropolitan area of Amsterdam, with -
in the larger Randstad, continues to be a great metropolitan force.
The city combines many qualities including the urge to innovate, a long
history of excellence in urban planning at all scales and a way of
dealing with (unforeseen) change. This has helped to build the AMS
Institute's excellent 'Smart Urban Mobility' research theme, deployed
at all times in consortia of pioneering stakeholders, rep -
resenting the quadruple helix (academia, private, public and users/
citizens). The 'Smart Urban Mobility' research portfolio contains a
broad variety of projects that help understand major mobility challenges -
lenges the metropolitan area currently face and find (innovative)
solutions to improve the cities' spatial and functional quality and the
quality of life of its citizens. Through research projects, AMS Institute
works on a number of specific topics. On (1) understanding and
predicting the dynamics of mobility by collecting and fusing data from
a multitude of sources (2) Autonomous vehicles on land and on water
and their impact on mobility and the built environment -
ment (3) Active mobility and the behavior of pedestrians, cyclists and
crowds and (4) The new role of public transport in cities as part of
broader Mobility as a Service development. All aiming towards
improving accessibility and the movement of people and goods, re -
reducing congestion and air pollution and with that rethinking the mo -
bility system and how we interact in and use existing spaces.
In a city where physical and social interaction is encouraged in a
healthy way, the level of inclusiveness is significantly higher.
Public spaces and public hubs, such as (train) stations have the power
of democratically inviting all city users when designed and implemented
correctly and providing (connections to) a better quality -
ity of life for different social groups.
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AMS Institutes fosters sustainable value creation, towards a unique, contemporary

and vibrant environment for learning, discovery and innovation.

The book 'Stations as Nodes – exploring the role of stations in future metropolitan
areas from a French and Dutch perspective' is an extremely 'rich' and appealing outcome
of such an environment and collaboration. A representation of explorations by the
brightest, most entrepreneurial talents in advanced applied technology and design,
always with the aim to find real life solutions that will transform cities towards
prosperous, dynamic and adaptive living environments.

23

Prefac
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24
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Mobility as a Driver of
Urban Change
Kees Kaan Delft University of Technology,
Manuela Triggianese Faculty of Architecture and the Built
Environment, Chair of Complex Projects

Undoubtedly there is an unbreakable relationship between the changes 25

in human mobility and the appearance of our cities. A town for travelers
and horses has different physical characteristics than our contemporary
city. Over centuries, European cities have developed into what they are
now, strongly influenced by military, political, cultural and economic
logic. For example, the traces of the water city are still apparent today
in many Dutch cities, where canals once served as the main transport
system.
The way we move goods and people has a defining impact on the
way we inscribe the territory and thus how we organize our cities and
how they take their physical shape. Naturally intersections of
infrastructure within the urban territory generate extra activity and
therefore those knots can become strong drivers of change. The
marketplace, a bridge, a hostel at the crossing of important routes, a
train station or an airport become catalysts of urban transformations.
Railway and subway stations, harbor terminals, ring roads, service
stations, interchanges, underpasses, viaducts and airports, in short,
cover a relevant portion of the landscape. Infrastructure and especially
Prefac
the railway have always played an important role in urban planning,
changing the character of urban form, becoming the generator of new
architectural typologies and urban configurations. The railway
terminus, for example, often served as the focus for planning or
replanning towns and city centres. New York's Grand Central Station
(1911) is an exemplary case, which has 'shaped the destiny of
Manhattan'.1
The nineteenth century marks the birth of the railway. Railway
stations not only heralded a new age of travel, they took the form of city
gates with a monumental character. More than the role of entrance into
the city, as demonstrated by the great Victorian station King's Cross in
London (1852) or Cuypers' Central Station in Amsterdam with its
Renaissance-derived façade (1881–1889), the station also
provided urban and rural populations with a social center, acting as a
2
focal point for the community, as a center of the industrial society.
There are, in fact, different types of trains. The ones that travel long
distances and cross the continents, and the metropolitan trains that
support the growth of the Metropolis.
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Since its origin in Europe during the Industrial Revolution, rail transport
has relied on heavy investment in tracks crossing the tar -
ritory and train stations at important junctions and on the edges of cities. The
train has spurred territorial polarity and strong density -
cations at hubs. Once the lines are in place and the intersections have been
formed, flexibility is practically gone. The train is bound to tracks, it's a
'vectoral' mode of transport. The knots in the sys -
tem became very dominant in the development of the metropolitan
areas.
The twentieth century brought us the car, a much more versatile and
26 flexible vehicle. Though it cruises the road it can be used on roads that vary
from a simple sandy lane to a hypermodern motorbike -
way. By car we can go anywhere. The car spurs sprawl. It gave birth to the
Megalopolis. In the beginning the radius of cars was limited and for longer
travel we still depended on the train, but towards the second half of the
twentieth century we could cross Europe or the USA by car as easily as by
train. Nevertheless, the train, a collective modality, with its dependence on
high investment is likely to be a transport mode with a public character, the
car is very suitable as a private asset. The car became the symbol of the
twentieth-centu -
ry rise and freedom of the middle class, its impact was so big that a car-
oriented society developed. The car made it possible for urban territories to
expand over large areas with suburbs and new towns to spring up anywhere.
The car was the main driver of sprawl.
Another important development in the twentieth century was transport by
air. Over decades the airplane became available to the middle class to move
around on a global scale. The airplane is not bound to tracks, but it relies
heavily on the existence of proper and safe facilities to land and take off: the
airport. Basically, the airplane also spurs multipolarity, but on a global scale:
airports become a network connecting the global metropolitan city-regions.

European cities have grown and developed as sprawling and fragmented -

mentioned entities interconnected by a system of infrastructure, in which
transport networks have assumed a prominent visibility and importance. After
the Second World War, the development of the city in the Netherlands, for
example, was mostly driven by land and air transport, which for the first time
took over the system of canals.
Near the end of the twentieth century the high-speed (HS) train, a new
modality, brought the train back into competition with the car for distances of
100 to 300 km and with the airplane for distances of 300 to 1,000 km. Since
the fast train is compatible with the stations of the 'regional' train, it impacts
heavily on urban development. Most trains
stations go back a long time and are positioned at very strategic lo -
cations in the metropolitan areas. The fast train also makes use of these hubs.
It does not need a remote site from the city, like an air -
port does, but the fast train can simply enter the heart of the city.
With the fast train the 'vectoral' modality makes a comeback and
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further sprawl can be limited. Therefore, in the last decades we can see
a revival of high density city centers. This development makes the train
station once again one of the most important 'intermodal nodes' and
therefore a driver of urban change, especially when it is also linked to
a high-performing road system and near a global hub, such as an
airport.
3
This century – characterized by a mobile society –represented
a turning point in the history of railways in Europe, observing in -
increased shares of high-speed trains (HST) and light rail + metro lines
in the modal split of passenger transport. Looking at the HST stations
and also airport stations with the increase of mobility and number of 27
users, a new category of buildings has appeared with complex
programs never defined but always in continuous de -
velopment. Particularly the building of HST station leads to very high
expectations for the growth of the surrounding neighbourhood.
When located in the middle of the city, or in dense urban areas, the
station leads to large-scale development plans, as happened in the
Netherlands with the national key projects 4 , while when located on the
periphery, such as Lyon-Satolas in France, the big plans have yet to prove that they are
indeed catalysts for the region's growth.
Since a train station is and has been at the heart of so many chang -
es in the city over the last 200 years, it represents an important case
study to analyze. The complexity of the redevelopment of a station
building and its district has to do with several factors: the number of
stakeholders involved, their ambitions and expectations, the fi -
financial conditions and unpredictable economic and political fluctuations -
tuations, as well as the urban configurations of the station location –
being both an infrastructure project and an architectural and urban
Prefac
design intervention.
In line with the assumption that 'mobility is a driver of urban change',
at the Chair of Complex Projects, Department of Architecture at the
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Delft University of Technology, we are working in collaboration with
the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions and
Deltas, Infrastructure & Mobility Initiative on an education and research
project with the Randstad (the Dutch Metropolis) as a living laboratory.
In this project we assume that urban changes are primarily dictated by
economic strategic areas that grow more rapidly than others, such as
areas around mobility infrastructure and intermodal nodes, such as
stations and airports. The station as a strategic intervention is the
focus of the research initiative presented in this publication on French-
Dutch approaches.
In the process of 'permanent change' of mobility modalities, the
pressure is on main stations and it is increasing their spatial, organ -
izational and financial constraints. Crucial questions for the design
are: How can new mobility concepts be integrated with the station
becoming a public transport hub? In complex projects with numerous
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ÿ
New York Grand Central
Station, 2018.
© Manuela Triggianese

stakeholders and long lead times the scope itself is subject to de-sign. The need to
share the proposals and discuss them with stake-holders demands a design approach
to establish the communication and to develop the scope. Therefore, design is not
only seen as an activity to develop a model for a possible future but design is also a
tool for communication.

Our approach in education, as illustrated in this publication by the summer school

'Integrated Mobility Challenges in Future Metropolitan Areas', is to use the design of
strategic urban interventions as a didactic research tool for training students to
develop a narrative and an open and curious attitude about design solutions and
28 products of the design process. Especially on the subject of large-scale projects, where
the interplay between multiple actors

and the complex interventions get another dimension, the notions of 'learning through
doing' and 'thinking through design' are import-tant.
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29

Notes

1
See Parissien, Steven.
'Station to Station' 1997

2
In the catalog of the itinerant
exhibition at the Center Pom-
pidou Les Temps des Gares
(1978) Jean Dethier presented great
stations as 'centers of the
industrial society'. Prefac
3
For a definition of mobile society see
Bertolini Luca. Fostering Urbanity
in a Mobile Society: Linking
Concepts and Practices, Journal of
Urban Design, Vol.
11.No. 3, 319–334, Oct. 2006
4
Due to this complexity, many
station projects can take 10 up to
20 years to be finalized, as
demonstrated by the Dutch key
projects, the development of the
main (new) stations and urban
programs around them in the cities
of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den
Hague, Utrecht, Arnhem and Breda.
For more information about the
development process and design
of the National Key Projects in the
Netherlands and their future, see
also: Bureau Spoorbouwmeester (2016)
De Nieuwe Sleutelpro-jecten. Op weg
naar 2030.