Thesis Dissertation for the Masters of Design (MDes): Future Mobility and Design Research Degree at the University of Cincinnati
This thesis was awarded the DAAPworks 2020 Director's Choice Award
Transportation design and transportation planning have been working independently from each other in the past century. Designers have focused on developing vehicles, and planners have focused on developing infrastructure, both in a stable paradigm of roads for cars. By 2040, autonomous vehicles (AVs), hyper-connectivity and a shared economy will drastically change the current transportation paradigm (Corwin, Jameson, Pankratz, et al., 2016). These factors will increase the complexities of cities and infrastructure by introducing new types of vehicles, requiring designers to incorporate methodologies from the planning field to meet the needs of the population, and planners to consider new types of vehicles in their methodologies. Further, the corridor between Cincinnati and Dayton is projected to grow in population and employment by over 20% in 2040 (2040 OKI Regional Transportation Plan, 2012), and the current transportation infrastructure plan for 2040 by the OKI (Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana Regional Council) will not accommodate the projected needs of the region. This thesis project proposes the conceptual configuration of a mass transit system between Cincinnati and Dayton in 2040 based on integrating transportation design and transportation planning methodologies. Preliminary results from this proposal show that the careful coordination of design and planning methodologies, applied in a student mobility system project are very effective.
This thesis’ main area of impact is Design Education, with impacts in Planning education, by promoting collaborative future mobility studios with integrated methodologies to propose relevant solutions. Future areas of impact include the Workplace, where 3 professional designers and planners trained under the new mobility paradigm can integrate both methodologies, and can then shape the Built environment referring to the proposal’s implementation, making better arguments in a field where a large-scale stakeholder involvement process is held, including government and policy-making entities, public participation, larger data set analyses, land use studies and private company’s engagement.
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