Charting the Future of Urban Mobility in Istanbul

(l-r) Dilem Kaya, R&D, Product Development Engineer, Ford Otosan; Mine Izmirli, Environmental Advocacy Coordinator, TEMA

(l-r) Sibel Bulay, Director, EMBARQ Turkey; Selim Dundar, Bahcesehir University; Prof. Mustafa Ilicali, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Advisor, Bahcesehir University; Dr. Pinar Özuyar, Manager, Center for Energy, Environment and Economy, Özyeğin University

Vodafone headquarters in Istanbul provided the venue this week for the second of two city workshops for the SUM 2040 Urban Futures project which is co-sponsored by the FIA Foundation.  The study – which is being undertaken by the Forum for the Future, and is also sponsored by Vodafone and EMBARQ, is using scenario-building  to establish urban mobility solutions in a world of growing fossil fuel shortages, and differing levels of global agreement on a sustainable way forward.

The world population faces prodigious levels of population growth up to 2040, by when two thirds of us will live in cities. The global car fleet will have more than doubled on the same time horizon, and whilst the Foundation is working hard through the GFEI to ensure that it will be as fuel efficient as possible, the simple fact is that this growth will present a real challenge just in terms of the weight of numbers in most urban areas. This all creates real mobility challenges for those cities – many of which are already clogged with traffic, and facing real problems in term of pollution and congestion.

This week’s workshop meeting, was the second of two workshops which have taken place in the project’s case study cities of Mumbai and Istanbul. The audience of academics, NGO’s Government officials and representatives of the business community in Istanbul participated actively in the bespoke ‘future-gazing’ exercises which the Forum team – who are world leaders in the field of future-gazing – developed. By taking into account a far wider range of possible factors than those usually considered in current transport planning, such as potential developments in I.T., lifestyle trends, and radical technological developments,  the participants were encouraged to suspend disbelief and think themselves forward to a 2040 where, for example, every citizen might have a personal carbon account, be growing their food on their roof, and riding bicycles in wind-assisted tunnels!

The ultimate purpose of the work is to consider what the implications of possible futures are for Istanbul and Mumbai, and in scoping this out to establish what action is needed now to create the platform for really sustainable mobility which employs all of the tools and skills available to us.

Speaking after the event Sheila Watson, Director of Environment said:

This week’s workshop was a very enjoyable, but also very challenging exercise in considering how we chart a sustainable way forward for mobility in the world’s growing cities. Alongside fuel economy, FIA Foundation sees the issue of urban mobility as centrally important to the debate on sustainable development  as we go forward. We are very excited therefore to be part of such an influential partnership with Forum for the Future, Vodafone and EMBARQ, and we look ford to sharing the results of this work more widely, later this year.