A methodological approach to assess urban mobility scenarios for climate change

Abstract

Climate Change poses new challenges and creates opportunities to the urban systems for which planning needs to gain insight into methodological approaches from a spatial, integrated and strategic perspective. To achieve this, scenario planning methods become not only suitable to embrace those visions, but also to promote a more proactive dimension of the decision-making process. Therefore, this paper aims to present a methodological approach in developing planning methods and techniques to face climate change, through the definition and assessment of urban mobility scenarios. The proposed methodology consists of analyzing different urban areas (“urban laboratories”), over which the planning instrumental capacity to achieve adaptation and mitigation objectives is assessed regarding particular constraints, needs and opportunities offered by each scenario in relation to two core features: automobile dependence and the response capacity of the urban environment.