Thomas Vanoutrive

University of Antwerp, Faculty of Design Sciences · Research Group for Urban Development

This dialogue offers a reflection on the presentation of the student work of urban planning students at UAntwerp in the ONTO issue on Transit-Oriented Development (TOD).

In recent years, Mobility as a Service (MaaS) has received considerable attention in transportation research and policy. The MaaS discourse emphasizes its user-oriented nature and flexibility, which, at least in theory, fits well with the more complex mobility patterns of mothers. We use five key perspectives to analyze MaaS and compare this to the...

Research on transportation and accessibility disadvantage provides normative frameworks to assess and remedy accessibility disadvantages. In this paper, we focus on the concept of sufficient accessibility by exploring the ethical concept of sufficientarianism, and addressing questions such as what people value and when people have “enough” of a par...

For many years, the literature has pointed to the difficulties with the development of transport policy measures which meet both social and environmental policy objectives. Low Emission Zones (LEZ) offer an interesting example of measures that aim to decrease traffic-related air pollution, but which might have significant social effects by reducing...

As a response to urban decay, more entrepreneurial urban regeneration strategies have been proposed, in particular since the 1980s and 1990s. Especially in the early years, the focus was more on mega-events and iconic cultural buildings than on transportation. With the rise of sustainable mobility policies, transportation has obtained a central pos...

This article argues that applying a polysemic understanding of the concept of ‘social transformation’, in which inclusion-, power-, and subjectification-oriented approaches to social transformation are all taken into account, provides a richer understanding of the transformative dynamics at work in contentious urban planning processes. We illustrat...

Ports and airports, which are often referred to as gateways, are spatial concentrations of jobs outside city centres. Their structure and location leads to distinctive commuting patterns and to spatial mismatch-related problems. An analysis of Belgian gateways reveals that car driving and carpooling are more popular than elsewhere and that several...

Economics and its sub-disciplines often developed in close relationship with its audiences. This paper examines the public life of one particular case, the idea of marginal social cost pricing for ports, by highlighting two key episodes. The first episode was the emergence of port pricing in the 1970s, when the academic concept found a willing ear...

The aviation sector is one of the fastest growing emitters of greenhouse gases worldwide. In addition, airports have important local environmental impacts, mainly in the form of noise pollution and deterioration in air quality. Although noise nuisance in the vicinity of airports is recognized as an important problem of the urban environment which i...

The topic of justice has increasingly attracted attention from transportation scholars, and a variety of perspectives and approaches are employed to study this topic. Arguably the most elaborate and sophisticated theory is put forward by Karel Martens in his 2017 book “Transport justice”. We start with a critical reading of Karel Martens’ work whic...

This article explores the relevance of combining multiple understandings of democratic politics to analyse the ambivalent and contentious dynamics of citizen participation in spatial planning. Building forth on the ongoing efforts in critical planning theory to overcome the deadlock between collaborative and agonistic oriented planning approaches,...

Numerous social science studies found inspiration in the natural sciences to explain historical events and processes. Similarly, geography has a long history of scholarly work crossing boundaries between the natural and social sciences. A good example of such nature-society transfers is offered by the literature that models the spatial growth of in...

Congestion pricing concerns the right to travel during peak hours. Most proponents of pricing propose an impersonal and anonymous allocation mechanism based on the willingness-to-pay of the person who travels. This view builds on the concept of private property rights and we confront this view with a different conception of rights, one based on nee...

This paper studies clusters in the logistics sector. Like traditional cluster research, indicators of concentration to detect co-location of employment are calculated. However, this approach is enhanced by including a quantitative analysis of the inter-firm relations between logistics companies through the use of a community detection algorithm on...

This paper discusses how a particular tool in the employment relationship has become part of a desirable transport future. We examine how and why the employee mobility budget has entered the set of sustainable transport measures in Belgium. In a discourse analysis, we examined 52 articles from newspapers, magazines as well as research reports. The...

In Belgium, transport economists, sustainable mobility advocates and members of civic society propose ‘obvious’ solutions to traffic-related problems, but generally feel ignored by policy-makers. The problems to solve include traffic jams, air quality and traffic safety, and the solutions that are put forward are congestion charging, employee mobil...

In Belgium, transport economists, sustainable mobility advocates and members of civic society propose 'obvious' solutions to traffic-related problems, but generally feel ignored by policy-makers. The problems to solve include traffic jams, air quality and traffic safety, and the solutions that are put forward are congestion charging, employee mobil...

In this paper, we challenge the so-called orthodox sustainable transport vision, by confronting it with two possibly troublesome issues; (1) the urge for growth, and (2) the question of social justice. On the basis of seven cases from Belgium, a country with a strong commuting culture and a traditional tendency towards multimodality, we show that t...

en Firm financing literature has been dominated by a relatively ‘undersocialized’ and ‘aspatial’ view. We approach this gap by applying a social capital and economic geography informed lens to financial transactions. We explore if and how the early growth performance of venture capital backed organizations varies with the structural and physical lo...

For some time now, many planners have embraced the idea of congestion pricing, an idea that has its origins in the field of transport economics. A positive attitude towards pricing, however, seems to be at odds with values commonly held by planners. To clarify this paradox, we need to thoroughly understand the history and sociology of the idea, and...

The development of transport networks has been explained, predicted and planned using a variety of methodological approaches. These range from narrative historical accounts to the application of models borrowed from the natural sciences, the latter being predominant in the field of transport economics. Probably the most remarkable example is the mi...

In this paper we present a meta-analysis of Park-and-Ride (P+R) facilities. Our goal is to identify the determinants of effective sites and to assess their contribution with respect to various transport policy objectives. An effective facility predominantly attracts target group users, i.e. users who without the P+R would use the car for the entire...

Many transport planners and policy-makers compare cities on the basis of travel behaviour or transport system characteristics. These comparisons are then used to promote cities as ‘cycling capitals’ or ‘public transport paradises’. However, data-related and methodological issues make comparisons across cities difficult. This paper presents an alter...

Employers are regularly involved in transport planning and characteristic workplace-oriented tools include: (1) travel plans for building projects, (2) mandatory travel plans, (3) subsidies to employers with an advanced travel plan and (4) best travel plan awards. In all cases, experts judge the level of car use. We argue that decision-makers might...

Hoewel België nog nooit zo mobiel is geweest, gaat er geen week voorbij zonder dat het verkeer de media haalt als bron van frustratie, vervuiling, onveiligheid en klimaatverandering. De opkomst van het ethische principe van duurzaamheid heeft het mobiliteitsdebat nog complexer gemaakt. Want hoe gaan bereikbaarheid, vlot verkeer en duurzaamheid eige...

Transport is debated by many, and liberalization processes, transport policy, transport and climate change and increased competition between transport modes are the subject of heated discussion. Smart Transport Networks illustrates that whether concerning road, water, rail or air, knowledge on the structure of transport markets is crucial in order...

The ever-changing environment in which ports operate has put strong pressure on the role of port authorities. The evolution of port governance has so far mainly been analysed in qualitative terms, through expert knowledge and case studies. This article fills a research gap in providing a quantitative analysis of port governance in Europe, using dat...

Companies play an important role in the mobility debate as they can be considered as the primary ‘creators’ of commuting traffic. In recent years, companies have developed a variety of initiatives to improve the mobility of their employees, although their visions and actions are often neglected in the research literature. This paper aims at ide...

Home to work travel remains the prime focus of mobility management policies, in which the promotion of carpooling is one of the main strategies. Besides governments, employers are key players in this strive for a more sustainable commute. However, commuting research tends to focus on individual commuters and their place of residence, rather than on...

It is often stated that one of the advantages of geography is its ability to include various spatial scales (other than the individual). In transport policy, the workplace is increasingly seen as a level of intervention which, as a consequence, should be researched by geographers. The present essay discusses the workplace as level of analysis in tr...

Transport policies promote rail as a sustainable commuting alternative. Workplace factors influence this commute, but are often neglected. A multilevel model is set up to analyse the share of rail in the commuting modal split at workplaces in Belgium. This model takes into account characteristics of both the workplace and the municipality where the...

EMPLOYER MOBILITY PLANS: ACCEPTABILITY, EFFICIENCY AND COSTS The concentrated and repeated nature of commuting traffic offers action potentials to control or reduce the number of single-occupant vehicles commuting during the peak hours. As source of the home-to-work journeys, the companies have a ringside seat to promote sustainable mobility and th...

Competition between ports depends on inland freight distribution and the spatial structure of the hinterland. With this, ports and port regions increasingly compete to serve distant hinterlands. In a European context, many researchers refer to the agglomeration of economic activity in the Rhine-Ruhr area and the ‘blue banana’ to explain the con...

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Companies bring a growing attention to the home-to-work journeys of their workers. As an important initiator of travels, they have been encouraged by the authorities to cooperate in order to reduce the negative impacts of car traffic. Employer Mobility Plans (EMPs) have been implemented in a growing number of companies in recent years. These plans...

The term mobility management is increasingly used to stress that contemporary transport policies try to tackle mobility-related problems (congestion, air pollution,...) by taking 'soft' measures, instead of providing 'hard' infrastructures. Soft measures entice people to use other transport modes than the car (e.g. bicycle), to work at home, or to...

Uit proza kan heel wat afgeleid worden over wat leeft in onze samenleving. Daarom citeren diverse wetenschappers uit romans om zo de maatschappelijke fenomenen die ze onderzoeken te illustreren. In onderstaand essay worden citaten uit romans van de bekendste Vlaamse schrijvers geplaatst tegenover beschrijvingen van de ruimtelijke ordening in meer z...

The daily commute is still the main source of traffic congestion. Despite transport research emphasis on commuters, the work end of home to work travel receives less attention. However, employers influence the commute behaviour of employees in different ways. The Belgian database Home-to-Work-Traffic (HTWT) contains information on accessibility, wo...

Both public policy-makers and private companies promote carpooling as a commuting alternative in order to reduce the number of Single Occupant Vehicle (SOV) users. The Belgian questionnaire Home-To-Work-Travel (HTWT) is used to examine the factors which explain the share of carpooling employees at a worksite. The modal split between carpooling and...

As source of the commuting traffic, companies take an important role in the mobility debate. These last years they have developed a lot of initiatives in order to improve the mobility of their employees. Though, their visions and actions are often neglected in the literature. This paper aims at assessing the efficiency of mobility policies of the c...

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is increasingly seen as a critical issue in the port sector. The SEA and other European environmental directives are mainly perceived as a burden for port development and port professionals often have little knowledge about the reasons why an SEA is necessary. According to a European directive (2001/42/EC) a...

Ruimtelijke beelden zijn alomtegenwoordig in de ruimtelijke planning en worden in structuurplannen vertaald in een kaart van de gewenste ruimtelijke structuur (GeRSt), die kan uitgroeien tot een soort icoon. Het gebruik van schematische modellenkaarten in structuurplannen is zeker lovenswaardig maar desalniettemin kunnen kanttekeningen gemaakt word...

One of the themes of the NEW! Delta project is theme 3 "Creation and restoration of coastal and estuarine habitats" Within this theme two demonstration projects of habitat creation and restoration schemes have been implemented: one in the port of Antwerp and the other in the dune area "De Zilk" along the Dutch coast. The contributers of this study...

The link between economic activity and freight transport is a classic issue in regional science. A subtopic is the impact of economic activity on the demand for maritime transport through ports. Understanding this relationship contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of port throughput, which is important for infrastructure planning an...

Cartography has commonly been used in regional science, and Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis is regularly applied to visualise the distribution of the variable of interest in space. Articles often contain several maps of administrative areas showing the values of a certain variable. However, and despite the benefits of such maps, they are nothing...

This paper aims at analysing the impact the attitudes to Employer Transport Plans (ETP) have on their effectiveness. To achieve this aim, a survey among mobility managers of companies located in Belgium is performed and data of a large scale survey about mobility behaviours are used. The results show that employees and employers are mainly favourab...

Spatial econometrics and also multilevel modelling techniques are increasingly part of the regional scientists" toolbox. Both approaches are used to model spatial autocorrelation in a wide variety of applications. However, it is not always clear on which basis researchers make a choice between spatial econometrics and spatial multilevel modelling....

Cartography has commonly been used in regional science and Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis is regularly applied to visualise the distribution of the variable of interest in space. Articles often contain several maps of administrative areas showing the values of a certain variable. However, and despite the benefits of such maps, they are nothing m...

The link between economic activity and (freight) transport is a classic issue in regional science. A subtopic is the impact of economic activity on the demand for maritime transport through ports. Understanding this relationship contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of port throughput, which is important for infrastructure planning...