Tag Archives: mobility

by | 13/03/2013 · 10:28

Guest article – The Philippino way, Part 1: Mobility

by Daniel Wagner*

The jeepney, claimed by some as the ‘National car’

The jeepney, claimed by some as the ‘National car’

Arriving at the airport in Manila, my first choice of transportation to go to the hotel (which was carefully chosen in a central neighborhood close to the airport) was a public one. One of the greatest metropolis of the world with about 11.5 million people, Manila has two rail way systems, Metro Rail Transit (MTR) and Light Rail Transit (LTR). None of them reaches the international airport. Like the majority of the big cities in the so called “global south”, integration of the public transportation system is a problem. So, since there are no buses, I would have to take a jeepney (local private transports) to the first train station – a LTR, change to a MTR line, and after a few stations take another jeepney to the hotel. Conclusion, I took a taxi.

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by | 17/10/2012 · 07:31

Uberlândia – or why we should hear more about second- and third-row cities

By Renard Teipelke

Uberlândia – Uber what? Denmark, The Netherlands, or a city in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? Far from that! Uberlândia is actually a medium-sized city in Brazil (population: 604’000). On first sight, the city seems to be nothing more than the second-largest city in the state of Minas Gerais. Uberlândia is strategically situated between Brazilian’s coastal urban areas and the hinterland, thus making the city a major logistics hub. But one major project that has been implemented in Uberlândia for the past 20 years exemplifies what we can learn from cities in the second- or, in this case maybe even, third row. It is about going beyond the prime big shining examples we (professionals in academia, the media, politics, and business) are likely to look at most of the time. Continue reading →

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by | 02/07/2012 · 12:10

Guest Article: Skywalks in Hong Kong and their Consequences on Urban Communities

Figure 1: An Impression of a Multi-Level Transit City by W.H. Corbett, 1913 drawing “City of the Future”

by Patricia Woo [1]

Higher-density living has been long explored as a means to contain urban sprawl.  Past research has found many environmental benefits with this strategy – reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, using less land and reducing air pollution and water usage.   However, high-density cities pose two major problems for transport planning: one relates to planning for facilities necessary for ease of movement of a large number of commuters within the city, and the other to the task of addressing pedestrian-vehicular conflicts that could arise in the competition for space in the constrained spaces in cities.

Planners and architects in various cities have been pre-occupied with these two problems for a long time.  Visionary architects and planners have come up with imaginative pictures like the “multi-transit city” (Figure 1), where several skywalk systems criss-cross at different levels, and working in concert with each other. Continue reading →

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by | 08/05/2012 · 09:57

Three Short Movies about Traveling the World and Their Messages

By Renard Teipelke

Traveling the world as an adventure (or a luxury) undertaken by young adults has become a well-known part of life of today’s younger generations. Multiple blogs are filled with online diaries, pictures, videos, links, and other pieces of information that are shared with friends and the world wide web for various reasons. Rick Mereki, Tim White, und Andrew Lees have been on a six-week travel around the world and made three short movies with impressions from the eleven countries they visited. Each movie has been framed by a specific theme, and they all highlight (indirectly) many aspects of traveling the world and understanding its heterogeneity and complexity – both, as I would say, with regard to leisure activities as well as research. Continue reading →

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by | 11/07/2011 · 15:24

Farewell Welfare?

By Renard Teipelke

In the typical Hollywood movie, a homeless person is normally sitting in front of a office building and begging for a few cents. In contrast to other features of Hollywood movies, this is actually not an unrealistic image. Similar to many other countries, homeless people in the United States are having a life full of struggles: no health insurance, hardly any sheltered places to sleep in, no humane life. Those are only three aspects that roughly describe the everyday challenges for homeless people. Continue reading →

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by | 10/04/2011 · 16:40

Mobility is not just about cars: Ciclovía in Bogotá

by Ares Kalandides

While doing research on strengths and weaknesses in Bogotá, Colombia, there was a recurring theme that most of my interview partners kept referring to: Ciclovía. If you’re new to Bogotá, you can’t grasp the importance of this institution for the quality of urban life. But once you get to experience it, you fall in love. Continue reading →

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