FAMILYflow
Enhancing Multimodal Travel with Children: Improving Experiences and Overcoming Car Dependence
- Call
- DUT Call 2025
- Duration
- –
- Project coordinator
- University of Graz
In the Global North, becoming a parent often triggers a move to suburban areas and the purchase of a car. Families combine care, work and household tasks in complex trip chains, while public transport and shared mobility are rarely designed for traveling with children. Car dependence becomes entrenched, with consequences for emissions, road safety, children's independent mobility and social inclusion. Yet mobility planning relies on aggregate traffic models that prioritize efficiency over social realities, leaving families underrepresented in data and decision-making. FAMILYflow asks which social and spatial factors drive car dependence among families, and what can be learned from car-free and carless parents and their children — experts in everyday multimodal mobility whose knowledge is largely absent from research and planning. It further examines how multimodal travel can be made worthwhile in line with the 15-minute city, and what long-term social and ecological impacts reducing family car dependence would have.
FAMILYflow leverages parenthood as a "window of opportunity" for multimodal travel habits. The project first develops reproducible multi-level metrics of car dependence, combining GIS analysis, participatory mapping, and surveys. These guide the selection of car-dependent neighborhoods in four case regions, which become urban living labs (ULLs): the KEM Region Weiz-Gleisdorf in Austria, focusing on children as under-recognized actors; East Flanders in Belgium, on mobility hubs and carless families; Rae Municipality near Tallinn, Estonia, on families who moved out of the city; and a Polish metropolitan area, on cycling and car-free families. In each ULL, mobile ethnography captures how families experience everyday travel. Families and stakeholders then co-create solutions, tested in real-world trials with cargo bikes, transit passes, and temporary infrastructure adaptations. An agent-based model simulates their long-term social and ecological impacts. Throughout, families act as co-producers rather than research subjects, and findings will be synthesized into transferable solutions.
FAMILYflow will deliver an integrated framework for inclusive, family-oriented mobility planning that bridges lived experience and technical modeling. An open-source car dependence framework will allow municipalities to measure and monitor car dependence at neighborhood, practice, and household level and to integrate it into SUMPs and 15-minute city strategies. Two open toolboxes translate the findings into practice:
• The Family Toolbox offers trip-planning guides, tips for reducing car dependency, and interactive tools to engage children.
• The Stakeholder Toolbox provides decision-support instruments for mobility planners, local authorities, schools, and community organizations.
The four regions benefit directly from tested interventions, while agent-based simulations let other cities anticipate the social and environmental effects of comparable measures. Mobility providers gain a clearer understanding of family demand, and parents and children gain influence over planning decisions shaping their daily lives. Results will be shared via the DUT Knowledge Hub, policy briefs, a white paper, and open-access publications.
Austria
Belgium
Estonia
Poland
University of Graz, Department of Environmental Systems Sciences (AT), Technical University of Graz, Institute of Urbanism (AT), Lakeside Labs (AT), Novunex (AT), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research (BE), Tallinn University, Centre for Landscape and Culture (EE), University of Warsaw, Centre for European Regional and Local Studies (PL), Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (PL), Rowerowy Poznań (PL)
KEM Region Weiz-Gleisdorf, Verbund Linien, Municipality of Weiz, Zwei und Mehr, SOLVA, VENECO, Flemish Department of Mobility and Public Works (MOW), Netwerk Duurzame Mobiliteit, Rae Municipality, Association of Local Authorities in Harju County (HOL), GZM Metropolis, Stork Cargo Bike
Contact
Prof. Dr. Nina Hampl, Viktoria Schett