Car Sharing as an Instrument for Urban Development: Conceptual Framework and Simulation on Interactive CityScope Tables

Starting from the assumption that development of urban areas is linked to mobility and access to transportation, the paper investigates car-sharing services as an active instrument for urban development. It hypothesizes that purposeful implementation of car-sharing invigorates “sleeping” urban areas, and potentially turns them into places of high urban and real estate value. For testing this hypothesis, a custom made simulation software was designed for application on the interactive modeling table CityScope. The tool enables the dynamic analysis of urban accessibility in the form of heatmaps and lines out with a special “Impact Mapping” feature the change of accessibility through car-sharing. Using demographic and mobility data of the city of Hamburg, the paper demonstrates how the accessibility of cities can be analyzed with the tool, and how appropriate areas for car-sharing services can be identified.