Cars have been domi­na­ting cities ever since they became a mass commo­dity. Urban space distri­bu­tion leans heavily towards the moto­rized traffic. A 2014 study in Berlin found that 58% of road space is reserved for car use and only 3% dedi­cated to cyclists. One third of the space dedi­cated to cars is used for parking, here each car is blocking public space for more than 23 hours a day on average. We are still witnessing the conse­quences of the concept of the “auto­ge­rechte Stadt” / car-centric-city which has been intro­duced as the Leit­motif of city plan­ning since the mid-twen­tieth century.

And while many state actors are still pursuing the car-centric city, the status quo is incre­asingly being chal­lenged by supra-national actors and trea­ties (such as in the New Urban Agenda of the United Nations and the Paris Agree­ment ), by inno­va­tive city and district govern­ments in various cities (Paris, Brussels, Wien, Berlin Fried­richs­hain-Kreuz­berg, to name just a few), by lobby groups and by bottom-up popular move­ments, the latter acti­vists having prepared the ground for these changes some­times for decades. They all are arti­cu­la­ting the need for a radical trans­for­ma­tion of urban mobi­lity towards more sustainable and more active means – a stark contrast to private car owner­ship and private car usage.

The project deals with the reduc­tion of car usage as – argu­ably the most ambi­tious – part of the Mobi­li­täts­wende / Mobi­lity Tran­si­tion we are facing. We start from the current status quo and analyse various measures that aim at redu­cing and aban­do­ning car usage employed, planned, and suggested both by state actors and by non-state-actors in several cities across Europe and poten­ti­ally also other parts of the world. We will check these measures for their (poten­tial) impact and explore what accom­panying measures would be needed to make the car-free/ car-reduced city work. Addi­tio­nally, we will look at secon­dary, unwanted impacts such car-redu­cing measures might have – the keywords here include poten­ti­ally gentri­fi­ca­tion and displacement.

As one example of a proposed measure, we will analyse the proposal of the Refe­rendum “Berlin Car Free” which envi­sages a whole regu­la­tory set of measures which – if adopted – would almost ban private cars from a large part of Berlin’s inner city.

Another ques­tion the project seeks to cover is that of the re-use of space in the post-car-city. What will happen to the multi-lane roads, to the high­ways, to the carparks? What amount of space will be needed for future means of trans­por­ta­tion; what amount of space might be freed and available for which other uses?

The project language will be English

https://moseskonto.tu-berlin.de/moses/verzeichnis/veranstaltungen/veranstaltung.html?kalenderveranstaltung=107385&startdate=2022–10-17&enddate=2023–02-18&dateforweek=2022–10-17