Poly-SUMP

Summary

Planning urban mobility is a complex undertaking for any city, even more so when urban functions, people and mobility are scattered across different towns of polycentric regions. The Poly-SUMP Methodology has been developed and is being used to develop a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) for a region with a polycentric profile crossing administrative areas. The Poly-SUMP Methodology uses a collaborative working process to bring together key stakeholders of the polycentric region to initiate dialogue across institutional and geographic boundaries, regarding the region’s common mobility challenges and issues.

Planning mobility in polycentric regions requires the coordination of policies and services of many stakeholders – transport and urban planners, local and regional policy makers, urban and interurban public transport providers – within and across different centres and administrative boundaries. Without such polycentric planning, citizens are almost obliged to adopt a ‘do it yourself’ solution of individual car use for mobility purposes. This is increasingly problematic for large portions of the population living in polycentric regions and it will become increasingly so in the future with the constraints envisaged for conventional car use for urban mobility in 2030 and beyond.

These guidelines adapt the SUMP methodology, originally conceived at city administrative level, for a polycentric region including a network of towns and villages. Poly-SUMP is indeed a new acronym for a new planning approach creating Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) for a polycentric region.