Skip to main content

Audi Urban Future Award – mobility of the future

The Audi Urban Future Award aims to stimulate new visions for cities and urban mobility; research collaborations with academic and cultural institutions worldwide; interactive events and workshops that bring together experts from many fields; and an internal interdepartmental think tank dedicated to issues of urban mobility. According to Audi, by 2050 two-thirds of all people will be living in large cities, a development which will pose major challenges for society and raises the question: what will be t
December 8, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
The Audi Urban Future Award aims to stimulate new visions for cities and urban mobility; research collaborations with academic and cultural institutions worldwide; interactive events and workshops that bring together experts from many fields; and an internal interdepartmental think tank dedicated to issues of urban mobility.

According to 2125 Audi, by 2050 two-thirds of all people will be living in large cities, a development which will pose major challenges for society and raises the question: what will be the future of urban mobility?

Four interdisciplinary teams competed in the 2014 Audi Urban Future Award to validate different ideas about how data will change urban mobility in four cities: Berlin, Boston, Mexico City and Seoul.

Berlin architect Max Schwitalla, who led the German team, proposes using an abandoned four-kilometre railway line at Berlin’s Tegel Airport to create a dedicated test track so lines of autonomous vehicles can travel in convoy.

The Boston team, headed by Philip Parsons, conceived a multimodal marketplace for mobility, founded on highly complex simulation software that makes it possible to calculate the opportunities for new technologies and provides a transparent basis for investment decisions.

The team from Mexico City, headed by architect and city planner Jose Castillo, took first prize for their use of another emerging solution to congestion: big data. The team created an app which makes commuters into ‘data donors’, encouraging them to share data on their own movements, as well as publicly available data, with other users through a website. The system creates a valid database for sustainable urban and transportation planning. The app can then forecast traffic flows and allow individuals to adjust their own behaviour.

Experts from China, Germany, the United Kingdom, Columbia and the USA were represented on the jury. It was chaired by the director of the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University, Professor John Urry. “The teams’ ideas were as diverse as the cities that they come from. There were exciting approaches in all the proposals,” Urry stated in Berlin. “Ultimately we decided in favour of Mexico City because the project is already being implemented, and it provides concrete and above all affordable solutions for the urgent mobility problems in the mega-cities of threshold countries.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Financing the US road infrastructure – road user charging?
    February 2, 2012
    In the US, the National Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission's report to Congress will state that a national, distance-based charging is the only long-term solution to the country's infrastructure financing problems. The Commission's Chair, Rob Atkinson, talks to ITS International
  • Financing the US road infrastructure – road user charging?
    February 2, 2012
    In the US, the National Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission's report to Congress will state that a national, distance-based charging is the only long-term solution to the country's infrastructure financing problems. The Commission's Chair, Rob Atkinson, talks to ITS International
  • Parsons wins Engineering Excellence Grand Award
    February 14, 2017
    US engineering services firm Parsons has received the 2017 Grand Award in the transportation category from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Missouri for the Columbia I 70 Bridges design build project. Parsons was the lead designer for this US$18 million project for the Missouri Department of Transportation, which involved replacing six deficient bridges with five new weathering steel plate girder bridges while accommodating 80,000+ vehicles per day on the road. Built in 1957, the existing
  • Intertraffic 2016 Innovation Award nominees announced
    January 28, 2016
    Innovation and excellence will be rewarded at Intertraffic 2016, 5-8 April in Amsterdam, when the winners of the 2016 Intertraffic Innovation Awards will be announced. An international jury has scrutinised 91 potential candidates and after careful analysis and intense consideration has shortlisted 15 final entries. Awards will be presented in five categories – Infrastructure, Traffic Management, Safety, Parking, and Smart Mobility. One of these five winners will then be chosen as the overall winner of the 2