TOD-IS-RUR focuses on Transit Oriented Development (TOD), conceiving public transport as a backbone for socially Inclusive and environmentally Sustainable urbanisation in European Rural-Urban Regions (RURs). The overall objective is to go beyond the urban focus and undifferentiated, model-based approach of current TOD research and practice, and extend TOD to RURs with a context-based approach. The innovative training network will prepare a new generation of highly-skilled professionals able to meet the scientific and societal challenge of countering urban sprawl. The 9 Beneficiaries and 12 Partner Organisations create a unique platform for 10 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs), providing interdisciplinary and intersectoral expert-level training in analysing and improving TOD for RURs.
Using a research by design approach, Habitat Research Center coordinates this project that traces interactions between transport, urbanisation and landscape structures in rural-urban regions. Locating potential for improvement and sustainable transition, scenarios are developed offering tailor-made strategies fully rooted in rural-urban contexts. The scenarios give a range of futures: from small landscape alterations improving ‘walking continuities’ to public transport nodes, to no-car multimodal scenarios testing TOD corridors to its extreme for RURs with the development of new territorial figures beyond radial-concentric ones.