title: Measuring Multimodal Accessibility through Urban Spatial Configurations Case Studies of three cities in the Rhein-Main Agglomeration
Creators: name: Pandit, Lakshya
Publisher: name: UNSPECIFIED
Year: 2023

description: This research investigates the relationship between multimodal accessibility and the spatial configuration of urban areas. The built environment of a city and its urban areas, including its streets, building layout, and open spaces, has a significant influence on its ability to provide an accessible environment for people’s mobility. By studying the spatial characteristics of an urban area (such as city centres, transit areas and residential neighbourhoods), we can better understand how the built environment impacts accessibility and overall mobility in cities. For this purpose, the study is based within the urban agglomeration of Rhein-Main region in Germany, where cities have a polycentral system and the common objective of planning for an environment-friendly mobility region is prioritized. The research aims to identify parameters which connect and integrate different aspects of accessibility, through different modes, using a topological approach to bridge the gap between theory and practice in urban studies. The parameters cater to the principles of inclusive urban design for streets and variables which influence travel demand and trip generation. The parametric spatial assessment showcases how different urban areas performed based on the selected five aspects of accessibility: connectivity, intelligibility, closeness, directness and spatial freedom. Analysing the street network through the identified parameters corresponding to the aspects (including connectivity of street network, access to public transport, Space Syntax attributes assessing access to direct routes and ease of navigation, and ease of movement) narrows down the potential area for improvement in the cities. A pilot study was conducted in Darmstadt, a city in the agglomeration, for the initial spatial assessment. After the pilot study, urban areas in the cities of Frankfurt am Main and Offenbach am Main were selected for further study and inter-city comparison. The results reveal that different urban areas other than the city centres can have a better access to multimodal services, and that certain urban areas in a small city can outperform those in a big city on different aspects of accessibility. The objective characteristics of the urban areas from the spatial assessment were further compared with the subjective evaluation (via public survey) of the people (n=248) living in the agglomeration, which helps in understanding the mobility culture. The research outcomes confirm the difference between the objective and subjective perspectives, via ranking of urban areas based on their multimodal accessibility characteristics. This was more prevalent in urban areas showing low accessibility characteristics objectively. For instance, the city centre in Darmstadt and the transit areas in Frankfurt and Darmstadt remained on top of the urban area ranking hierarchy, both objectively and subjectively. In contrast, the urban areas showing low accessibility characteristics objectively i.e. the residential area in Offenbach am Main and the city centres in Frankfurt am Main and Offenbach am Main, varied in their subjective ranking. Overall, the residential areas in the three cities ranked lower subjectively. In addition, the dissertation addresses how collaborative projects with city planning authorities can effectively disseminate the results of urban studies. For instance, the road-closure experiment on Frankfurt’s Mainkai riverfront was used as an opportunity to examine the potential of Mainkai street for cycling (via spatial analysis), which supported the implementation of a new dedicated bicycle pathway. The outcomes of the spatial analysis have been used in the dissertation to address certain future urban development plans of the cities and its impact on the accessibility characteristics (e.g. implementation of new streets and its impact on intelligibility, identification of movement restriction in future residential densification projects and more). Furthermore, the study identifies and clusters urban areas based on similar multimodal accessibility characteristics. This approach helps in identifying common development needs and apply targeted measures to improve a large number of urban areas in future research. The dissertation explores and lays a ground work to understand multimodal accessibility by measuring it through spatial analysis, and contributes to the domain of accessibility planning, i.e. planning for people and places.