ASI - Assess implementations in the frame of the Cities-of-Tomorrow programme
Overview
Background & policy context:
Transport and mobility play an important role in the concept of Quality of Life (QoL) as they are central elements of the integration in society. Since implementations are generally aimed to increase QoL, it is important to assess how QoL of affected citizens is influenced and to be able to demonstrate that implementations in the public space do (indeed) have positive effects on QoL. QoL assessments are important for effective and efficient planning; implementations will be more acceptable, and thus feasible, if they do not significantly decrease individual QoL.
Establish satisfying communication between decision makers and users is an important basis for achieving co-operation from different segments of the population, which is important if they should change behaviour in some way to achieve sustainability. So far strong engineering focus has been taken in this area, but little action has been taken to understand, what difficulties different groups and sub-groups of people have with transport and mobility, as the need and interests of the relevant segments of the population are not considered appropriately.
The ASI project is an accompanying measure of the EC 5th Framework Program Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development in the Key Action 4: Cities of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage. It suggests methods for developing solutions in the transport and mobility area in order to make them more effective and more efficient, because they meet the needs of the target groups, (i.e. different groups of citizens in different parts of Europe).
Objectives:
The main objective of the project was to provide knowledge about the practice of quality of life assessment by different disciplines in connection with different types of public measures in the area of town planning and design, transportation and mobility.
Specific objectives of the project are to:
- examine how and to what extent policy makers and practitioners take into account QoL effects of implemented policies and measures;
- develop a preliminary instrument to assess such QoL effects, with the help of interviews politicians, decision makers, practitioners and other experts;
- develop a basic databank frame for both results of QoL assessments (questions used, answers given), of measures on basis of assessment results, and their evaluation with respect to effects on QoL;
- develop guidelines for the transformation of QoL assessment results into policies and measures.
Methodology:
The project was organised in the following groups of activities:
1) State of the art.
The state of the art had to rely upon the actual literature and empirical work data available. The aim was to find and summarise work in the area that has been done till then, as well as to find information about variables and criteria for the assessment of QoL from a psychological and social science perspective. The approach consisted of the following steps:
- study of publications, Internet search concerning parameters for QoL, QoL in connection with transport and mobility, instruments for measuring QoL;
- study of grey literature that is, among other things, available at the involved institutes;
- evaluation of the studied literature ;
- summary of the variables and criteria for the assessment of QoL;
- transparency of ASI with what LUTR is doing (Communication between ASI and the LUTR-Cluster);
- development of a first frame for the evaluation for the sites and for the experts interviews.
2) Preparation of the evaluation.
Firstly five sites in different European regions (Central, East, North, South, West), where planning, construction elements etc.... had been implemented with the goal to improve the sites with respect to the objectives of the Programme Cities of Tomorrow were identified. This selection was done in co-operation with responsible persons from the European Commission and the LUTR-cluster. A work plan for the consortium, especially with respect to time-space co-ordination and logistics was developed.
User groups were defined. This step depended on what user groups were affected at certain sites, with respect to gender, age, mode choice, disabilities, trip functions, etc..
Materials for the interviews with the experts were developed. Elaboration of an interview frame, consisting among other things of a list of topics to be discussed with selected experts at CoT-Implementation sites, and its translation and pre-testing.
The aim of the interviews was to find out in which way LQ aspects of different user groups, especially in connection with mobility and transport, were considered at these sites.
3) Carrying out of interviews with experts.
In-depth interviews with experts of different types and disciplines at the five selected sites were carried out. Approxim
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