Urban development, redevelopment and regeneration encouraged by transport infrastructure projects: The case study of 12 European cities

Abstract

This paper attempts to describe the potential of urban transport infrastructure projects such as metro, regional rail and tram, to indirectly work as a catalyst for the development and redevelopment of urban areas as well as the regeneration of declining areas. The paper presents the outcome of research on a sample of 12 European cities—Athens, Bratislava, Brussels, Helsinki, Lyon, Madrid, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Stuttgart, Valencia, Vienna and Zurich. This research is part of the Transecon project which was funded by the European Commission under the competitive and sustainable growth programme of the fifth framework— and concerned with all kinds of different indirect effects (economic, social and spatial) of new transport infrastructure investments in European cities. The outcome of the research points out that urban transport infrastructure may have a catalytic effect on the development, redevelopment and regeneration of urban areas but there are a lot of other influencing factors which make such re-urbanization processes a successful or unsuccessful story.

Notes

1. The Transecon project started in July 2001 with a 30-month work programme and completed in December 2003. In the Transecon Consortium, there were 16 partners, at least one partner for each case study city: The coordinator of the project was Institute for Transport Studies—University of Bodenkultur (ITS_BOKU), Vienna, Austria. The partners were (1) Steinbeis Transfer Centre Applied System Analysis (STASA), Stuttgart, Germany, (2) Stratec (STRATEC), Brussels, Belgium, (3) PRI.DOS—Planning Bureau, Bratislava, Slovakia, (4) Synergo (SYNERGO), Zurich, Switzerland, (5) Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering Section, Delft University of Technology (TUD), Delft, the Netherlands, (6) University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece, (7) Universidad Politecnica de Madrid—Transport Department (UPM), Madrid, Spain, (8) Viatek (VIATEK), Espoo, Finland, (9) Oscar Faber Group (OF), Manchester, UK, (10) Laboratoire d' Economie des Transports, Lyon, France, (11) Laboratoire d' Economie des Transports, Centre National de Recherche Scientific, (LET_CNRS), France, (12) University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, Transport Operations Research Group (UNEW), Newcastle, UK, (13) Consorcio Regional de Trasportes de Madrid (CRTM), Madrid, Spain, (14) ISIS (ISIS), Lyon, France, (15) University Linz, Department of Economics (ULINZ), Linz, Austria.

2. The UTH research team in Transecon Project consists of Prof. Philippos Loukissas, planner, head of the team, Dr Aspa Gospodini, architect-urban planner, Assistant Professor, scientific coordinator of the work package on urban regeneration effects (WP07), Dr N. Vogiadgides, social and political scientist, A. Bouziani, planner, D. Gerakinis, planner and S. Syrigos, planner.

3. Of the sample of 13 case study cities in the Transecon project, the city of Deft has been extracted since this city represents a special case due to the nature of the new transport infrastructure—which is a bicycle network.

4. This was part of the join questionnaire survey for all thematic work packages of Transecon project.

5. This task was curried out by the partners of the Transecon consortium—usually one partner for each case study city.