Job van Eldijk – Stadsbyggnad

Examinator: Professor, Liane Thuvader, Arkitekturens teori och metod, Arkitektur och samhällsbyggnadsteknik

Huvudhandledare: Docent,  Jorge Gil, Stadsbyggnad, Arkitektur och samhällsb​yggnadsteknik

Tid: 26 januari kl. 16

Plats: SB-H2, Sven Hultins gata 6, Chalmers och Zoom

Lösenord: PhD_Job

Transport infrastructure increases regional accessibility but at the same time it creates barriers that reduce local accessibility. These barriers reduce social contacts between people, and limit access to services and leisure. Barriers make cycling and walking less attractive, which has negative impacts on health, and can lead to increased emissions from cars. Assessments of barrier effects are commonly based on general descriptions and rough estimations, although methods for the quantitation of these effects have been developed. Reasons for not using the existing methods are limited dissemination, difficulty in separating barrier effects from other effects, and different terminology to describe them. This thesis aims to make existing academic knowledge and instruments regarding barrier effects more applicable in practice. 

The thesis presents a conceptual model that defines the five determinants of barrier effects: Transport features, Crossing facilities and street network, People’s abilities, Land use, and People’s needs, it defines three levels of barrier effects, and lists indicators and methods for quantifying barrier effects. The model and indicators are studied in two case studies. In the first, four of the indicators were operationalised using conventional GIS tools. In the second, the indicators were studied in an ongoing transport infrastructure project. In this study, participants reported how the barrier effects analyses contributed to the impact assessments with transparent and precise support, which allowed the stakeholders to solve a long-standing conflict about the project. One of the central issues concerned the need for collaboration in order to create input material for the analyses. 

Based on these results, the main findings of this thesis are that knowledge of both the social and technical processes regarding the assessment of barrier effects is required for making existing academic knowledge and instruments more applicable in practice.