Marco te Brömmelstroet

University of Amsterdam | UVA · Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research

Our mainstream mobility thinking is narrowly framed: it highlights the role of mobility in economic and urban growth, individual speed and system efficiency, but obscures its role in reproducing inequalities, and in driving unsustainable developments on a global scale. Critically, however, this narrative obscures our view on the increasingly proble...

Decrease of children’s independent mobility (CIM) has worried academics, policymakers, educators and other professionals for decades. Research and policy often emphasise that promoting children’s physically active and independent transport modes as cycling is important to achieve better public health, solve environmental challenges and increase rel...

Various measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 have altered mobility flows worldwide and caused people to adopt new ways of being and moving in public space. These changes have been considerably pronounced across modes of public transportation. This paper explores the experiences of individuals who continued riding and working in public transp...

The combined use of the bicycle and the train in the Netherlands has risen steadily over the past decade. However, little is yet known about the underlying processes driving the growth of bike–train use in the Netherlands. Are new bike–train trips replacing car trips, or are they primarily an extension of existing train travel and cycling practices...

Attempts to pursue sustainable mobility face widespread challenges. One key way of approaching these challenges is through policy transfer and policy learning; indeed, the practice of learning from elsewhere is encouraged at various levels of government. This paper contends that a better understanding of what facilitates learning through policy tra...

The dominant tradition in transport planning and policy practice considers travel as a derived activity and travel time as an economic disutility. A growing body of literature is challenging this perspective, demonstrating that being ‘on the move’ is a rich experience interlaced with profound shared and individual meanings that can have positive im...

As demand for cycling rises, cities are scaling up their bicycle planning and infrastructure efforts. There is not only a knowledge gap to building this infrastructure, but also an organizational learning gap, as planning organizations are stepping into new waters. This research investigates how well an agile (an iterative, collaborative) way of wo...

The Netherlands seems to exhibit the unique conditions that allow cycling on the country level instead of only the city level. Moreover, the national transit system seemingly provides one crucial condition: citizens use the train and cycling systems in an integrated manner, with combined bicycle-train transport recently demonstrating strong growth....

The literature on the New Economic Geography (NEG) suggests that transport cost is a major driving factor for the emergence of core–periphery patterns within a country. However, very few studies have tested this theoretical explanation in the context of transport infrastructure networks in developing countries. This paper takes a closer look at Nep...

Best practices are prevalent in all fields of planning and act to highlight effective and implementable examples, set standards, and generally assist ‘evidence-based' policy-making. In doing so, they frame what futures are desirable and play a role in shaping the planned environment. Despite this power, little is known about how certain policies co...

With this commentary, we share our reflections at the end of a five-year interdisciplinary research project (from 2016 to 2020) on cycling innovations in living labs across the Netherlands. The commentary is the product of a collective writing effort of the researchers. It combines reflections on both the content of our research project (cycling th...

Conferences are theorized as crucial sites, not only for professional development, but also for policy learning. However, little empirical evidence has examined pathways for why and how learning is realized. Using a unique case approach, this paper unravels conference learning dimensions by combining literatures of policy transfer and policy mobili...

A growing body of work conceptualizes study visits or study tours as a tool to accelerate policy transfer of, for example, best practices. Participation in study tours appears increasingly common for city management and decision makers involved in transportation policy. This paper extends current research to explore how knowledge gained from study...

The results of an international survey about working at home and commuting following the COVID-19 crisis . Do people miss their commute? is face-to-face contact important for their job? What are the (dis)advatanges of working from home? And what will they do after the restrictions have been lifted?

Traffic crashes undeniably levy a significant and detrimental toll on contemporary societies. They are a disruption of every-day traffic order, and the specifics of their coverage in the media offer insights into how a society frames and perceives this underlying order. This study analysed the terms and frames that are used in 368 reports on traffi...

Cargo bikes—bicycles made to carry both goods and people—are becoming increasingly common as an alternative to automobiles in urban areas. With a wider and heavier body, cargo bikes often face problems even in the presence of cycling infrastructure, thus limiting their possibilities of route choice. Infrastructure quality and the route choices of c...

Urban utility cycling is being promoted widely due to various health, social, economic and environmental benefits. This study seeks to identify and rank which municipal-level policies and other factors are most influential in increasing cycling as a means of everyday transport and improving the real and perceived cycling safety in car-oriented urba...

There is a widely shared view that planning actors require planning support systems (PSS) that can be easily adapted to changing project demands packaged in easy-to-understand formats. Recent studies confirm this and show that PSS are increasingly user-friendly. Still, little is known about under what conditions they add value in practice. This pap...

The future of cycling is about to change. At least, this is apparent if we are to believe the multitude of innovators, start-ups, incumbent industries, policy actors and consultants proposing to harness the power of digital techniques to improve and transform cycling experiences, infrastructures, and gadgets. This ‘smartification of cycling’ is a p...

Realising policy solutions needed to achieve ‘sustainable mobility’ is difficult because, for one, they require a strategic capacity for “coordinated action” across multiple actors and organizations. Policy learning and policy transfer have been discussed for decades as a way for policy makers to acquire capacity to effect change. However, the proc...

Cycle highways, also known as “fast cycle routes”, are an emerging concept in urban planning that describes long distance, high quality bicycle routes built for commuter use. In Northern European countries, large sums of money are invested into cycle highways promising to induce a mode shift with little critical assessment as to how cyclists experi...

The concept of accessibility offers a valuable professional language to bring stakeholders together in urban strategy-making settings. Most of the recently developed accessibility instruments that aim to do this suffer from low usability. One reason for this is the persisting disconnect between instrument developers and the potential users. Buildin...

As was described in Chapter 3, the methodological logic of the experiential case study was applied in 17 experiential planning contexts across Europe and Australia. To harvest the experiences of the professionals that participated in these cases, a set of surveys and data gathering methods was developed. Thirteen cases, comprising 80 participants i...

Although in the last decades there has been significant attention and investment into Planning Support Systems, very few have actually made it into practice. This phenomenon is mirrored within the domain of accessibility instruments, a specific subset of the Planning Support Systems (PSS) family. Literature suggests that a fundamental dichotomy bet...

To understand relationships between the urban environment and cycling practices we need new ways to face complexity and multidimensionality. Neither measurable environmental variables, nor thickly descriptive, particularistic, or overtly theoretical contributions provide satisfying recommendations for cycling policy and practice. We propose the dev...

Transport planning practice is experiencing rapid transitions. This shifting professional environment is prompting lively and sometimes bitter debates about how transportation models should be used. While these models and their outputs play an increasingly more important function in transport-related decision-making processes, growing concerns emer...

Accessibility concepts are increasingly acknowledged as fundamental to understand cities and urban regions. Accordingly, accessibility instruments have been recognised as valuable support tools for land-use and transport planning. However, despite the relatively large number of instruments available in the literature, they are not widely used in pl...

Quantity and quality of social relations correlate with our happiness and physical health. Our (feeling of) connectedness also matters for the efficacy and functioning of communities and societies as a whole. Different mobility practices offer different conditions for being exposed to other people and the environment. Such exposure influences a sen...

Planning Support Systems (PSS) can provide important and much needed knowledge and support in strategy-making processes, by bringing explicit information to daily planning practices. However, as decades of academic studies show, their use is riddled with barriers and bottlenecks. Academic studies generated insight in these bottlenecks and identifi...

Planning Support Systems (PSS) can provide important and much needed knowledge and support in strategy-making processes, by bringing explicit information to daily planning practices. However, as decades of academic studies show, their use is riddled with barriers and bottlenecks. Academic studies generated insight in these bottlenecks and identifie...

A set of process-related barriers negatively determines the effectiveness of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in transport planning. Recent research highlights the unstructured stakeholder involvement and inefficient public participation in earlier phases of EIA as key bottlenecks. While the academic literature has produced promising theories...

The tenuous link between knowledge and processes of urban strategy-making leads to suboptimal plans, time delays and financial costs. The planning professional is ill-equipped to deal with fundamental urban challenges that threaten the quality and competiveness of cities and regions. For decades, Planning Support Systems (PSS) are being developed t...

The integration of knowledge from stakeholders and the public at large is seen as one of the biggest process-related barriers during the scoping phase of EIA application in transport planning. While the academic literature offers abundant analyses, discussions and suggestions how to overcome this problem, the proposed solutions are yet to be adequa...

Although a large body of literature has been produced on the theoretical definitions and measurements of accessibility, the extent to which such indicators are used in planning practice is less clear. This research explores the gap between theory and application by seeking to understand what the new wave of accessibility instruments (AIs) prepared...

Although a large body of literature has been produced on the theoretical definitions and measurements of accessibility, the extent to which such indicators are used in planning practice is less clear. This research explores the gap between theory and application by seeking to understand what the new wave of accessibility instruments (AIs) prepared...

Accessibility instruments can play a valuable role in urban planning practice by providing a practical framework for exploring and testing relationships between land use and transport infrastructure. Despite many available accessibility instruments, they are still not widely used in planning practice. This paper explores the background of this prob...

Mobility cultures that promote car travel or long distance air travel – the most environmentally harmful and unsustainable mobility trends – are also influenced by cultural norms, social status and peer pressure. Movies are seen as having a reciprocal relationship with these cultural elements: they mirror particular real-life mobility patterns, and...

With its high cycling mode share, the Netherlands is often seen as a best practice for cycling policies. However, there is little insight into the drivers behind this phenomenon, specifically which policy interventions increased cycling rates and which did not. The knowledge gap on the effectiveness of cycling policies seriously limits the potentia...

Recent research has emphasized the importance of workshops as a venue where planning support systems (PSS) are used in planning processes. Empirical studies of these workshops have previously largely overlooked facilitation, in particular the role of a moderator (steering the discussion) and/or a chauffeur (steering the PSS). Drawing on existing fa...

For planning research to successfully generate usable mechanisms for planning practitioners more hypothesis-testing research designs are needed. Currently, the academic field seems more geared toward generating hypotheses, either by observing practice or from theoretical studies. This approach is especially common in research that generates knowled...

The effectiveness of EIA for evaluating transport planning projects is increasingly being questioned by practitioners, institutions and scholars. The academic literature has traditionally focused more on solving content-related problems with EIA (i.e. the measurement of environmental effects) than on process-related issues (i.e. the role of EIA in...

Evaluation literature suggests that assessments of integrated transport plans should be an inclusive dialogue, for which it is crucial that participants communicate with and trust each other. However, cost benefit analysis (CBA) of integrated transport plans is often characterized by communication deficits and distrust among plan owners and evaluat...

Despite the Netherlands' position as a premier cycling country (mainly due to its high cycling mode share), there is scarce insight into the variations of bicycle use between different spatial and social contexts as well as changes and trends over time. This gap severely limits the understanding of the context-specific aspects of cycling trends and...

This paper acknowledges the great potential of Geodesign. It notes, however, that barriers exist for urban designers to use GIS-based tools. An experiment we conducted with students and interviews with practitioners seem to confirm this claim. We identify four main barriers for the usage of GIS-based tools by urban designers: (1) impotence to handl...

Despite the Netherlands’ position as a premier cycling country (mainly due to its high cycling mode share), there is scarce insight into the variations of bicycle use between different spatial and social contexts as well as changes and trends over time. This gap severely limits the understanding of the context-specific aspects of cycling trends and...

•The transport policy domain is seeing a surge of behavioural change campaigns.•More attention for unintended and undesirable consequences of these are needed.•Hirschmann triad of futility, perversity and jeopardy can be a useful heuristic for this.•Financial rewards and gamification are effective but concerns about unintended consequences can be r...

A reduction of negative environmental impacts in transport planning is thought to be decisive in promoting sustainable development outcomes in our cities. This requires that transport planning assess the performance of projects based on insights from the environmental assessment field. One of the most representative tools associated with environmen...

This paper ended an initial period of wide enthusiasm in attempting to realise the potential of computer innovations to revolutionise urban planning (Harris, 1960). It was an era when both the planning and the computer domains were strongly influenced by strong positivist ideas about the nature of scientific progress. Planning was mainly a compr...

In Vrije Ruimte uit een prominent figuur uit de ruimtelijke sector zijn visie, onvrede of verbazing; eenmalig en zonder restricties. Deze keer pleit Marco te Brommelstroet voor een publicatieplatform dat het gemeenschappelijke leerproces ondersteund.

Integrated transportation plans require assessment approaches that can adequately support their multi-dimensional, context-specific needs. The suitability of cost benefit analysis (CBA) for answering this need has been studied in recent research: an analysis of participant perceptions in the Netherlands showed several problematic process issues whe...

To understand the complex meanings of mobility and to engage in transport planning and management processes, a variety of disciplines, skills, and tools are potentially useful. Universities have a limited amount of time and resources to train future professionals though. This poses a problem: where should the teaching priorities be? By means of a w...

Dat gebruik van kennis tot betere plannen leidt is een logische en verleidelijke gedachte die experts al sinds jaar en dag aanspoort om hun kennis toegankelijk te maken voor planners. Met de opkomst van digitale technologieën lijken planning en besluitvorming op basis van veelomvattende modellen, liefst gevoed met real-time informatie, binnen handb...

Mobility has become a central aspect of many people’s lives. This is the natural result of the massive investments made in the transport sector throughout the world. These investments were made because the benefits provided by mobility are many. However, the negative effects resulting from mobility cannot be ignored when sustainability is considere...

Academic discussions on Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) as an appraisal instrument for integrated land use and transportation plans tend to focus on its technical aspects. However, many issues of CBA also arise from process related matters, especially when assessing integrated plans. Using an inductive research design, we explored how these process rel...

Coat-benefit analysis (CBA) has become a key instrument for the evaluation of transport planning policies and projects in the Netherlands. Currently, this instrument is also used to evaluate integrated land-use and transport strategies. In Dutch transportts releted CBA the conceptualisation of benefits is directly related to a narrow understanding...

As extensively discussed by other scholars, there is a growing awareness that the integration of land use and transport (LUT) planning is a crucial prerequisite for the transition towards more sustainable transport patterns and urban development that foster interaction between people, support a sustainable business climate and reduces negative effe...

De Maatschappelijke Kosten-Baten Analyse (MKBA) wordt veel toegepast in de Nederlandse planningspraktijk voor evaluatie van ruimtelijk-infrastructurele plannen. Het blijkt een handig instrument te zijn, maar is desondanks controversieel. Deze controverse richt zich vaak op de inhoud, terwijl ook in het MKBA-proces knelpunten aanwezig zijn. Deze kne...

div class="page" title="Page 1"> De fi ets kan een belangrijke rol spelen in de transitie naar duurzamere steden. Om meer mensen te laten fi etsen wordt vaak gefocust op harde maatregelen, zoals infrastructuur. Als er al over promotie wordt nagedacht, is dit vooral gericht op rationele aspecten. Een aantal voorbeelden laat zien, dat juist het insp...

div class="page" title="Page 1"> De fi ets mag recentelijk op een toenemende belangstelling rekenen. Het fi etswiel wordt echter niet geheel opnieuw uitgevonden; voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog kenden veel landen een bloeiende fi etscultuur. In deze thema-editie schetst AGORA de contouren van de fi etsrevival. </div

There is broad and growing consensus regarding the central place of integrated Land Use and Transport (LUT) strategy development in establishing more efficient and sustainable urban environments. However, empirical evidence shows that such integration is hard to achieve in daily planning practice, due to many institutional barriers and substantive...

Most planning research seeks to understand how current planning practices influence (and are influenced by) the processes and institutional contexts of decision making and the transformation of spaces. Typically, analytical methods borrowed from other social sciences are employed for this purpose. However, if one wants to know how <?tf=“t906”>new p...

This paper assesses the embedding of land use and transport instruments—Planning Support Systems (PSS), models and tools—in Dutch planning practice, in order to shed light on how planning practitioners perceive these instruments and to ascertain the reasons and manner of their (lack of) utilization. These insights provide much-needed input to impro...

Planning support systems (PSSs) are intended to facilitate relevant steps in planning processes; however, the academic evaluation of PSSs reveals many bottlenecks precluding a widespread use of these systems. A central weakness is the lack of communication between PSS developers (focusing on technical issues) and potential PSS users. Other academic...

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One of the key barriers to integration of land use and transport planning is the lack of a “common language” (i.e. tools, instruments, indicators) that can support planners from both domains in developing shared visions and integrated strategies. Many of such tools and indicators have been developed in recent years, but not so many are implemented...

Until the mid-1980s, transport policy was considered by many as one of the least successful domains of the European integration project. However, from the early 1990s onwards, there are clear signs of a single European transport policy, along with the accompanying implementation of infrastructure projects. What is the explanation for such a change...

De sociaaleconomische en ecologische problematiek in new towns, zoals Almere, laat zien dat stedelijke processen in meerdere opzichten complexer zijn dan aanvankelijk werd gedacht. Verschillende soorten modellen hebben de potentie om ingrepen in new towns beter te begrijpen en te onderbouwen. Echter, om modellen succesvol in de praktijk te kunnen t...

The academic literature on Planning Support Systems (PSS) recently identified fundamental bottlenecks blocking widespread use of them in planning practice: a lack of communication between the developers and the potential users being a crucial one. Other academic fields (knowledge management and technological innovation) have recognized similar bott...

There is a widespread acknowledgement that an integration of strategic land use and transport planning is a crucial part this effort. Although this is recognized by academics, by the business world and, maybe more importantly, in the political arena, little integration can be observed in day-to-day planning practice. This is caused by both a lack o...