The growing population in the Netherlands is straining the accessibility and liveability of cities. To address these issues, new mobility policies prioritize quiet, low-emission, and space-efficient modes of transport, creating a conflict with the characteristics of private fuel-engine cars, which are noisy, polluting, and space-inefficient. For example, a private car trip in Amsterdam requires about 95m² of public space, including 15m² for parking. Consequently, Dutch cities are considering measures to reduce car mobility, with parking regulations viewed as a potential tool to decrease car ownership and enhance urban liveability. However, there is a lack of evidence supporting the effectiveness of these policies, as car ownership research typically focuses on sociodemographic and household factors.

This study aims to fill this knowledge gap and assist municipalities in balancing car accessibility with urban liveability. It begins by defining urban parking availability, influenced not only by the number of parking spaces but also by various regulations. Two main types of parking are identified: private parking on premises and public on-street parking. Additionally, parking permits, which subsidize parking costs for residents, are considered.

To understand the influence of parking availability on household car ownership, a multinomial logistic regression (MNL) model was used. Data from 80,527 urban households over three years from the Dutch National Traffic Survey (ODiN) was analyzed. The study operationalized the number of on-street parking bays per household, parking places on premises per household, and maximum parking costs in the municipality.

The results showed that parking availability in a neighborhood does affect car ownership. Both types of parking were positively related to car ownership, while higher permit costs in a municipality decreased the likelihood of car ownership. However, household composition and income were the most influential factors. The number of driving licenses in a household, closely linked to the number of adults, and disposable income were the strongest predictors of car ownership.

The study also examined the combined influence of multiple parking availability dimensions. It compared car ownership probabilities in three neighborhoods for average households and predicted car ownership levels for a potential new neighborhood under different parking availability scenarios. The findings indicated significant increases in car ownership with higher parking availability, emphasizing the need for balanced parking strategies.

The relationship between parking availability and car ownership is crucial for policymakers, as it supports the formulation of parking regulations aimed at reducing car ownership. Municipalities are advised to develop parking policies that consider the identified dimensions of parking availability to optimize public space use.

Future research should focus on proving causality, improving spatial data, and exploring additional factors of car ownership and parking availability. The study's limitations include the inability to establish causality and the need for more reliable parking data. Further research should also consider attitudinal factors towards car ownership and investigate the relationship between parking availability and car ownership in rural areas.

The study emphasises the importance of understanding individuals' mode choice between train and car to reduce CO2 emissions. It addresses two significant gaps in the existing literature, focusing on the impact of detailed attitudes towards mode use over time and the impact of train travel time components on actual mode use. The study reveals that environmental awareness and cost-consciousness drive increased train usage and reduced car usage, while status-sensitivity has no significant influence on mode use over time. Additionally, travelers place varying importance on different train travel components, with transfer time significantly impacting the modal share of the train. Furthermore, the perceived valuation of train travel time components emerges as a more reliable indicator of individuals' mode choice between train and car than the actual door-to-door train travel time. To encourage a shift from car to train use, the study emphasizes the need to encourage travelers to consider cost and environmental factors related to mode use, as well as the need to minimize transfer time and enhance the appreciation of transfer time

On January 1st 2024, the Environment and Planning Act (EPA) took effect in the Netherlands. This legislation aims to simplify existing environmental legislation for spatial projects by combining them into one. An important pillar of the EPA, specifically of the environmental permit, is public participation. However, the safeguarding of this in the law is limited since its organization is not regulated. In general, the methods for involving the public in environmental decision-making remain contentious, which has previously led to research into principles that define good public participation processes. The majority of the literature assumes that all parties involved in a process share the same principles, while it may be the case that stakeholders hold differing views on what constitutes a good process. In the EPA, a conscious choice was made to prohibit municipalities from imposing requirements on initiators on how they implement participation, the reason for this being enabling local customization. Yet, this uncertainty regarding the best practices for public participation can make it difficult for an initiator to set up participation for their project. This research aimed to gain insight into what constitutes a good public participation process by determining if and how stakeholders characterize this differently, specifically for real estate construction in residential areas. Therefore, the research question was as follows: What perspectives exist on what constitutes a good public participation process for real estate construction projects in residential areas and what characterizes the stakeholders within these perspectives?

Q-methodology was used to extract stakeholders' views on successful participation from the results of a survey. This resulted in the identification of four perspectives, representing four different collective views on good participation shared by several stakeholders. Perspective one, a trusted process leading to influence by the right people, considers participation to be good if trust is created and the input provided actually influences the initiative. The second perspective, a clearly defined process resulting in greater support, has a positive opinion about participation as long as the organized process is very clear, professional, and properly followed, and results in greater support for the initiative. The third perspective, achieving satisfaction with a tailor-made process, believes that participation is good if the process is situation-specific, followed well and there is satisfaction with how it went down, regardless of whether it resulted in adjustments to the design of the initiative. Lastly, perspective four, as long as everyone is heard, feels that participation is good when the design of the initiative is changed according to the input provided by participants who were involved from the start and whose expertise is valued. After the identification of these perspectives, it was investigated whether a relationship could be observed between a stakeholder's characteristic and their perspective. Here, it was observed that civil servants relatively adhere to perspective three more than the other groups.

This research has provided new scientific insights by showing that there are different views on what constitutes 'good' public participation. These perspectives have unique aspects but they also have some similarities. It is recommended that project initiators incorporate important aspects of all four perspectives when designing a participation process for an initiative, to ensure that it is as 'good' as possible. To aid initiators in doing so, a one-pager has been drafted which contains an overview of the important aspects of each of the perspectives. With this, the practical aim of the research - which was to provide support to project initiators for the setup of participation processes - was achieved.

Political and societal attention on transport inequality, transport vulnerabilities and transport poverty risk has been increasing the last five years. The Dutch government has committed multiple large sums of resources to abate the issue, 120 million euros to cancel the increase in price of train tickets, 300 million to cancel the increase in price and preserve the provision of the regional public transit and 6 million to start a pilot of ‘innovative public transport’ in the Zeeland region. A review of the literature on transport poverty risk reveals that past studies analyze the concept using a limited number of pre-selected variables. For example, car ownership and residence area. This carries the risk for misinterpretation as an accurate representation can only be achieved by considering all relevant variables. Such a comprehensive analysis could allow policymakers to formulate tailor-made policies according to the specific problems and needs of certain groups in society. This study aims to include the entire complexity of the concept of transport poverty risk in the analysis. Relevant factors include affordability, accessibility and mobility. Then there are individual differences, and for every individual changing over time, between needs of participating in society and social life. This study aims to incorporate this comprehensive definition in a Latent Class Analysis approach to construct groups of individuals based on the MPN and ODiN national datasets. The different groups of individuals can be then used to indicate the effect of policies on transport inequality. Results show three groups that are most transport ‘fortunate’, with high income, high car ownership, high accessibility and the potential to use different travel modes. Results also show one group with substantial transport vulnerabilities due to higher car dependency, lower car ownership and lower household income. A policy thought experiment is established through the application of mobility policy packages of three political parties. Car policies that reduce costs per driven kilometer such as reduction in excise tax will increase transport inequality due to the three groups that are the most transport ‘fortunate’, which also have the highest car use. This study provides the scientific community with a comprehensive definition and conceptual model of transport poverty risk and for policymakers contributes a comprehensive understanding of transport inequality in the Netherlands. Future research needs to focus on identifying specific minority groups that are not or less captured in the national datasets. Transport problems are experiences by an individual, while transport inequality is represented by the differences in the extent of transport problems between certain individuals or groups. In this case, certain groups in the Netherlands. This calls for the need to differentiate the government levels at which transport inequality and transport problems are addressed. While this study presents the transport inequality at the national level, municipalities will be able to identify specific individuals and neighborhoods who are more prone to transport problems.

To ensure transport models are effective tools for planning, they must not only adequately explain current travel choices but also maintain predictive accuracy over forecast horizons while being computationally feasible for practical use. One simple approach to achieving this is by including behavioral theories in transport models to improve the behavioral representation of models.
One such theory is Spatial Competition and Agglomeration Effects (SC&AE). This theory examines how opportunities present nearby influence the attractiveness of a destination. This influence can be either positive (Agglomeration) or negative (Spatial Competition). Although SC&AE is widely recognized in the literature for enhancing the explanatory power of computationally simple Multinomial Logit (MNL) destination choice models, its impact on the temporal transferability of these models remains unexplored.
This study assesses the impact of SC&AE on MNL destination choice models for home-based maintenance, work, and education trips in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam on a 5-year short-term forecast horizon (2018-2022) using Dutch National Travel Survey Data (ODiN). The findings indicate that SC&AE has a positive but limited effect on the temporal transferability of these models. This impact decreases with decreasing traveler autonomy and ease of switching to alternate destinations. In terms of percentage improvement, Transfer index metric shows an exaggerated impact (35.2% - 286.36%) while the other performance indicators, such as Fitting Factor (1.1% 3.6%) and % Correct predictions (0.14%-2.05%) confirm that the impact is limited.

The Circular City Index (CCI) project for Barcelona, conducted in partnership with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, aimed to assess urban circularity across multiple districts. Utilizing the City Circularity Index model as introduced by Muscillo et al. (2021), this research adapted the framework to Barcelona’s unique urban context, focusing on the four main components: Digitalization (D), Energy, Climate and Resources (ECR), Mobility (M), and Waste (W). The project benchmarks city performance against Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide strategic planning for a sustainable and resilient urban environment. Each district’s performance was measured through tailored Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) reflecting accessibility, infrastructure, and environmental data. Spatial and statistical analyses were applied to assess parameters such as waste collection accessibility, air quality, and renewable energy coverage. Data was gathered from open-source and municipal datasets, complemented by geographic analysis for a precise district-level understanding...