Skip to content 
Mobility will be one of the main drivers of future growth, and on average, each €1 invested in sustainable innovative mobility can generate benefits of up to €3 by 2030.
Tomorrow.Mobility World Congress (TMWC) is a global event, co-organised by Fira de Barcelona and EIT Urban Mobility in the Gran Via venue of Fira de Barcelona, focused on promoting the design and adoption of new sustainable urban mobility models and jointly organised with the Smart City Expo World Congress.
Over 80 speakers such as Kelly Larson, director of the Road Safety Programme at Bloomberg Philanthropies; Karen Vancluysen, secretary general of POLIS; Marco te Brömmelstroet, professor of Future of Urban Mobility at the University of Amsterdam; Mikael Colville-Andersen, Urban Design Expert and Thomas Geier, head of research and policy at the European Metropolitan Transport Authorities, Maria Tsavachidis, CEO of EIT Urban Mobility, participated in the more than 20 congress and innovation zone sessions of Tomorrow.Mobility. As part of the Congress, EIT urban Mobility, an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, sponsored the venue of 20 innovative startups, another 7 showcased their solution in the Demo zone.
At this year’s edition, two studies produced by EIT Urban Mobility are unveiled. The first of the two focuses on the 15-minute city approach, an urban planning trend that aims at reorganising neighbourhoods in such a way that all citizens have every basic service accessible within 15 minutes at the most. The second study analyses the development of urban air mobility, a disruptive air transport system for both passengers and last-mile logistics in urban environments.
The 15-minute city
The 15-minute city, is quite a recent concept that has taken momentum in wake of the pandemic and has been picked up by many European cities. The goal is to create a city where people could reach all their basic essential social functions like living, working, commerce, healthcare, education, and entertainment at a 15-minute by walk or by bicycle. In Europe, more than €1bn in cycling-related infrastructure and 2,300 kilometers of new bike lanes have been spent since the pandemic began.
Three workshops were conducted with planning practitioners from the metropolitan region of Amsterdam, Ghent, Madrid, Milan, and Munich. A key output of this study is a roadmap for the implementation of ±15-minute city strategies to ensure access and considering all citizen’s needs, and in connection with suburb areas. 15-Minute City concepts need to be adapted to local circumstances and population groups: for instance, older people walking speed is on average around 3.5 km/h while the average speed is considered 5km/h. Hence, a 15-minute walk could represent 900-1000m at an average speed, while at a reduced speed it could be 700m.
Urban Air Mobility
Given the fast pace of innovation, air mobility is expected to become a reality in Europe within 3-5 years and air space above cities could become an extension of public space on the ground. The European UAM market size is predicted to be 4.2 billion EUR by 2030, representing a 31% global share[1]. To set up the scenes for an inclusive urban air mobility scheme, this first study explores the different evolution perspectives of the sector. The study collected practitioners’ insights on the development and implementation of UAM from 12 European countries from the academic, public, and private sector.
Out of the sectorial experts, 89% expect that UAM applications will play a very important or important role in improving medical transport and support in medical emergency services. 63% of questionnaire respondents think that in the logistics field, UAM will play an important or a very important role in the transport of packages in industrial spaces. By contrast, only a minority of experts see a significant role in UAM applications in e-commerce and food deliveries. In terms of challenge, when moving forward with UAM, it is essential to consult citizens and it´s essential for them to feel safe, where subjective safety matters as much as objective ones. Traffic noise is the second main concern raised by the study, after safety, for the development of Urban Air Mobility for European citizens.
