Learning Centre

Research conducted over the last few decades in many western countries confirms that there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between transport poverty (i.e. lack of access to both private and public mobility resources) and social exclusion (inability to fully participate in life-enhancing activities).

In these contexts, households that do not own cars are overwhelmingly concentrated in the lowest income quintiles, where approximately only half of households own cars. For low income households with cars, mobility is still reduced -- they make significantly fewer trips and travel much shorter distances than their higher-income, car-owning counterparts.

The experience of reduced mobility often means that low income households are unable to fully participate in key activities, such as employment, education, health care and food shopping. It is perhaps for these reasons that car ownership among low-income households in the UK has increased more rapidly year on year than for other income brackets. Yet this statistical trend tells us very little about the actual motivations behind why people living on or near ‘the breadline’ (i.e. in poverty) are willing to commit so much of their limited financial resources to owning and running a private vehicle. They do so even when they find it difficult to afford other basic necessities, such as food, warmth, shelter and clothing. Much of transportation policy is based on the idea that low-income people do not own cars. Yet a growing body of evidence suggests that this is no longer the case.

What does the experience of low-income car ownership mean for our work in transportation, and what lessons learned from other western countries can help guide our efforts here in Canada? Join transportation expert Karen Lucas as she explores these issues and discusses the ‘auto motives’ of low-income populations, by drawing on case study evidence from different geographical and social contexts over the last 20 yrs.

In this webinar, you will learn:

• What social exclusion is and how it relates to transportation;
• The various motivations behind car ownership for low income households and individuals;
• The opportunities and challenges of car ownership for people of limited financial means; and
• Further research and policy measures required to help address these issues.

This webinar will discuss the opportunities and the challenges of urban cycling, such as current approaches on the sustainable implementation of cycling infrastructure and related policy development for urban stakeholders and the future of station based and free-floating bike sharing.

Mr. Daizong Liu, from the World Resources Institute (WRI), will talk about how “Bikes make cities thrive again” and

Mr. Pablo Celis, from the Municipality of Aarhus, Denmark, one of the cycling-friendliest nations in the world, will tell the story of “The rise of a cycling city”.  

Mr. Sebastian Ibold, from GIZ China, will moderate the presentations and discussions.

The planned schedule is as follows:

1. Welcome and introduction (10 minutes)

Moderator: Mr. Sebastian Ibold (GIZ China)

2. Input presentation (20 minutes)

"Bikes makes cities thrive again“

Speaker: Mr. Daizong Liu (World Resources Institute WRI) – 20 minutes presentation

3. Input presentation (20 minutes)

"The rise of a cycling city“

Speaker: Mr. Pablo Celis (Municipality of Aarhus) – 20 minutes presentation

4. Interactive discussion with the audience (30 minutes)

Target Audience

GIZ Transport & Environment (T&E) Working Group Members and other interested “sustainable transport”, “urban” and “climate“ colleagues from GIZ, as well as collaborators and partners from the development community.

This EU-funded mobility project offers training courses to help companies develop innovative solutions that can reduce congestion in cities. The FLOW project aims to tackle urban congestion by developing walking and cycling measures. Its training courses are for companies, such as app developers and consultancies, that provide products and services related to urban transport, urban planning, walking and cycling and/or reducing urban road congestion. The training consists of interactive e-learning modules and webinars that introduce new products developed by FLOW partners, such as software that analyses traffic, provides forecasts, and manages data from geographic information systems. Companies that take part in the training will feature in an online catalogue that FLOW will present to European local authorities - opening doors to new contacts and potential clients.

8 November 2017, 14:00-15:30 CET

In this third and final FLOW webinar, we will explore the policy context of applying the FLOW tools, including politically effective facts and messages for implementing walking and cycling measures in cities, lessons learned from the FLOW cities' experience applying the FLOW tools and a discussion on transferability.

Around the world, major challenges of our time such as population growth and climate change are being addressed in cities. Here, citizens play an important role amidst governments, companies, NGOs and researchers in creating social, technological and political innovations for achieving sustainability.

Citizens can be co-creators of sustainable cities when they engage in city politics or in the design of the urban environment and its technologies and infrastructure. In addition, citizens influence and are influenced by the technologies and systems that they use every day. Sustainability is thus a result of the interplay between technology, policy and people’s daily lives. Understanding this interplay is essential for creating sustainable cities. In this MOOC, we zoom in on Amsterdam, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City, Nairobi, Kampala and Suzhou as living labs for exploring the dynamics of co-creation for sustainable cities worldwide. We will address topics such as participative democracy and legitimacy, ICTs and big data, infrastructure and technology, and SMART technologies in daily life.

This global scope will be used to illustrate why specific forms of co-creation are preferred in specific urban contexts. Moreover, we will investigate and compare these cities on three themes that have a vast effect on city life:

•  Water and waste
•  Energy, air, food and mobility
•  Green spaces and food

This MOOC will teach you about the dynamics of co-creation and the key principles of citizens interacting with service providing companies, technology and infrastructure developers, policy makers and researchers. You will gain an understanding of major types of co-creation and their interdependency with their socio-technical and political contexts. You will become equipped to indicate how you can use co-creation to develop innovative technologies, policy arrangements or social practices for a sustainable city in your own community. You will demonstrate this by developing an action plan, research proposal or project idea.

Basic knowledge of sustainability in urban settings, urban environmental technology and urban management is assumed.

This course forms a part of two educational programme of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) - AMS Vital and Circular city research themes. It is developed by Wageningen UR and TU Delft, two of the founding universities of AMS Institute, and in cooperation with Tsinghua University.

What you will learn:

• Different definitions, forms and typical examples of co-creation for developing sustainable urban water, energy and green systems.
• The potential of co-creation for developing sustainable cities.
• The interdependency between co-creation and its policy and socio-technical contexts.
• Comparison of different real-life cases of co-creation.
• To understand interdependencies between the real-life cases of co-creation and their policy and socio-technical contexts.
• How to formulate the potential of co-creation in your work or daily life.

Today, more and more onus is on governments to provide seamless inter-modal travel for their citizens. With increased transport options comes greater need for instant data exchange between transportation authorities providing the would be passenger with the right information at the right place in the right time. This webinar will discuss the key challenges in providing a seamless intermodal travel scenario and provide answers how to address these challenges.

Some of the topics to be discussed in this webinar are:

• How to improve multimodal travel with technology – what is there, what is missing
• How to design the best door to door information platform which would provide a traveller with personalized and real – time data
• Smart Ticketing
• Last mile problem
• What travelers expect from inter-modal terminals and stops – PTL model – place – time – language

Simulation tools help public authorities in the planning of e-bus systems and electrification of their fleets. They are an integral part of the work in the use cases of Pillar A “Safe integration of e-Buses using existing electric public transport infrastructure” of the ELIPTIC project. After a short introduction into the work of the ELIPTIC project and the use cases related to the webinar’s topic, the presenters from the research organisations RWTH Aachen, Fraunhofer IVI and Vrije Universiteit Brussel showed different aspects of simulation that help in the planning of e-buses. This included the presentation of a software-based approach to find the optimal technical configuration for the use of e-buses on different routes by Fabian Meishner, RWTH Aachen. These calculations are a helpful tool to build sound business cases for the long-term use of electric bus systems. An example was also given of the results of a vehicle simulation-based feasibility study of converting a Diesel bus line with hybrid trolleybuses (by extending the existing trolleybus line) in a rural area in the East of Germany (Dr.-Ing Thoralf Knote, Fraunhofer IVI). Hybrid trolleybuses have an on-board energy storage which enables a fully electric operation without catenaries. Finally, the webinar addressed design questions and charging strategies for e-buses, exemplified in the case of Brussels (Prof. Dr. Omar Hegazy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel).