Call “Pruebas de Concepto 2021”, Ministeri de Ciència, innovació  universitats.
1/2/2021 – 1/12/2023

Promoting active mobility is a fundamental component of progressive transport policies. The climate emergency, the promotion of health in urban areas, and the need to contribute to equity in access to the transport system, have turned walking and cycling into fundamental pieces of everyday mobility in Spanish cities. However, as the group’s previous research corpus and international literature demonstrates, active mobility requires certain built environment characteristics in order to be a viable transport alternative. Among these characteristics are morphological factors such as walkability, cyclability, urban vitality, but also environmental and exposure aspects such as air pollution, noise or exposure to urban greenery. Any effective policy to promote active mobility needs to take into account these factors, and their heterogeneous distribution throughout the territory, in order to understand which areas of the city are best adapted for pedestrians and bicycles. Traditional methodologies, however, often struggle in offering the necessary level of spatial disaggregation.

To this end, this Proof of Concept (PDC) project proposes to consolidate the group’s previous research on the determinants and effects of active mobility in a set of basic spatial indicators calculated for the cities of Granada, Valencia and Palma de Mallorca. These indicators will be harmonized and standardized at the street or block scale using an orthogonal grid of 100x100m. The common cartographic base of core-components of active mobility also makes it possible to calculate partial indices and a synthetic index of the Territorial Potential for Active Mobility (PTMA) with which to show the territorial distribution of the potential for active mobility.

The PDC proposes the development of an Atlas of Mobility territories composed of a web viewer that provides access to view, download and share all the accumulated spatial data, and specific training in determinants of active mobility and its link with public health. The developed tool has the potential to help in the management and planning of active transport by administration and transport companies, but also the potential to be converted into a package of interest to the private sector or the public in general. The project proposes not only to develop the Atlas but to explore its future commercial exploitation and the convenience of patenting the achieved progress.