Linking Innovative Forms of Living With Mobility Services in Business Models Housing Providers and Initiatives as Initiators and Actors of Socio-ecological Change

Housing and mobility are closely interlinked in everyday life. They shape land uses, environmental quality and quality of living. In order to minimize social and ecological impairment, it is useful to consider housing and mobility as increasingly combined. The research project aims at developing and testing models with which mobility and housing services as well as land uses can be planned and implemented. These models will be evaluated in the project on the basis of their economic viability and social impacts.

The research project wishes to initiate a transfer of knowledge and practice between communal housing initiatives and housing companies. Innovative ideas of concepts for communal living and mobility will be designed in a compatible and economically viable way. The research project offers a knowledge pool in which promising ideas and concepts have been collected.

In order to systematize and better utilize scopes for action and innovation, framework conditions and practiced business models, good examples and existing proposals and organizational forms of different housing companies and initiatives will be analyzed.

Dimensions for analysis are inter alia models in areas of high or low demand or in new constructions or existing buildings. The resident structure and target groups will also be examined more closely. Moreover, for existing buildings, the project team will examine the residents’ traffic behavior and mobility orientations.

At the core of the project is the transdisciplinary development of specific concepts for the selected practice partner which will be put into practice in real-world conditions. The concepts will be developed in teams of research and practice partners.

The housing initiatives or companies will then put the developed measures and business models for housing and mobility services into practice and will be scientifically supervised for that.

Subsequently, the experiences from the “real-world laboratories” will be evaluated and empirically analyzed as far as possible in order to answer the following questions: Which sustainability impacts do implemented services have in terms of their ecological, social /sociocultural and economic dimensions? And how viable and feasible for existing business models and organizational forms are the concepts which should be marketed?

Further informations: www.wohnmobil-projekt.de