Inner development and transport in a city-regional context

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Carsten Gertz
• Subject Area: City Planning, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 563425489

This research project is concerned with the question of whether there is a specific difference in the traffic behavior of the residents of settlements of inner and outer urban development. Although inner urban development is considered a desired settlement development compared to outer urban development due to the lower vial consumption, there is a lack of relevant evidence whether this is also accompanied by a different travel behavior of its inhabitants. In particular, the question arises whether a traffic behavior can be observed that cannot be explained by the typical characteristics of settlement structures such as density, mixed use or accessibility by public transport. Therefore, it should be investigated whether there is possibly a kind of 'transport-related inner urban development component'. Depending on the findings, the topic of inner urban development might also have to be reconsidered from a transport perspective with regard to traffic avoidance. Therefore, the example of the Hanover region will be used to identify the settlement development there according to projects of inner and outer urban development of different ages. Subsequently, a representative sample of the identified settlements is to be selected. The selected households are to provide information on their travel behavior by means of a survey. The collected data will be processed and evaluated accordingly and will visualize the travel behavior of the households separately for settlements of inner and outer development. Together with secondary statistical surveys, similarities and differences in travel behavior between inner and outer urban development as well as other settlement structural and personal characteristics will be made visible. Based on these fundamentals, conclusions will be drawn for the planning design of the processes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants