Using ‘Mobility Environments' in Practice: Lessons from a Metropolitan Transit Corridor in Spain

Abstract

The last few years have seen a growing interest in furthering our understanding of the complex relationships between land use and transport. Nevertheless, putting that knowledge into practice in urban transport planning has been adversely affected by the lack of broad consensus on the main concepts and methods used in this field. To address that issue, this paper proposes a new approach based on the concept of ‘mobility environments’ as a new instrument for mobility planning. To illustrate and assess the ‘mobility environments’ approach, an application has been developed for a metropolitan transport corridor in the city of Granada (Spain), where local institutions are funding the implementation of a new light rail system. This paper highlights a number of important findings related to what exactly ‘mobility environments’ are and how they can be used in planning practice.