Recently, I completed an important personal milestone: I successfully submitted my master thesis project for grading. My thesis was completed as part of my masters program, "Sustainability, Society and the Environment" at Kiel University in Germany. In the thesis, I build on what I first discussed in a previous essay of mine, A History of Auto Dominant Mobility and Future Alternatives.
In that essay, I left off identifying how cities employ various auto-reduction strategies. For my thesis, I wanted to take my analysis further by developing a tool cities could potentially use to identify where best to implement auto-reduction strategies. Doing this also provided me with the chance to deepen my knowledge of urban analytics and work extensively with GIS data.
What came out of it was a methodology I developed for calculating a walkability index. The logic here is that highly walkable areas are also areas well suited for auto-reduction because those living there already have suitable alternatives. Considering the city of Kiel is very much interested in reducing the amount of cars on its streets in the future, this was also a practical exercise that may be useful to residents and city planners.
To help show case this work, I have created an entirely separate website called "AltMo" (short for "Alternative Mobilities"). The website currently has a single case study highlighting the walkability index itself and my proposal for a congestion charge-zone in Kiel. The links to this website as well as the PDF version of my thesis are listed below:
Happy reading, and I hope you find my work interesting!