Connected city

Our cities are becoming busier and busier. And this is only set to increase over the coming years. More and more people are using our cities – for work, for school, for day trips or a night out. This forces municipalities – and all of us, really – to think about urbanisation and mobility in a different way.

The challenge is to ensure that cities remain both accessible and liveable. Simply building even more roads and tunnels is no longer sufficient. Innovative ideas are needed for improving accessibility and mobility, without affecting the liveability of the city for people and nature. Integrated solutions are required for tackling the problems effectively.

It is not easy to represent such large-scale urban issues in terms of specific tendering processes. Building a multistorey car park may well increase parking capacity, but transport connections also need to be arranged so that the car park actually gets used. A new station may well increase the appeal of public transport, but if the transfer options are not practical, travelling by train will remain a secondary alternative.