A methodology towards sustainable urban mobility: Community-led experiences in Kadiköy

Today almost every sector endeavor after solutions for environmental problems which take place parallel to economic and technological developments. Climate change as a result of air pollution and loss of ozone layer is on the agenda of many environmental discussions. The solution of these problems that threaten humanity represents a global process. Since the industrial revolution, global warming of the Earth reached 1 ˚C. So it is taken into account and has been decided to keep the grade below 2 ˚C also as posible as 1.5 ˚C level by scientists. Besides the climate change issue, demand for energy and conspicuous consumption issues are also at the center of recent debates. Considering the increasing world population and limited resources, it is apparent that there is a tremendous urgency for reducing cities' energy footprints. Factors such as housing, mobility, and recreation affect environmental pressures. Lifestyles and consumption patterns play important role to reduce this pressure. To this end, households are considered among important target groups in most of the energy conservation discussions. According to World Bank, worldwide energy use per capita increased by approximately 18 per cent in the last decade. When the energy use rates are examined by sectors, it is observed that transportation is one of the significant sectors that accounts for roughly 27 percent of the total world energy consumption. Furthermore, it is the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions after power generation. It is clear that an urgency exist on adapting the changing climate and boosting energy efficiency. As an obligation of this, cities need to save energy with technological and innovative solutions. In addition to infrastructural and policy improvements on mobility, changing individual travel behavior is a certain step for ensuring sustainability on mobility. This study tries to create a conceptual framework for sustainable urban mobility while using citizens as a catalyst to achieve sustainable urban mobility. And it aims to understand how citizen-led experiences effect individual learning for behavioral change towards sustainable urban mobility within evaluation individual's urban mobility related energy consumption by an interactive web-based platform developed within a JPI-Urban/ERA-NET Smart Cities and Communities project funded by TUBITAK, titled as "Community Data-Loops for energy-efficient urban lifestyles (CODALoop)". The platform aims to calculate individual energy consumption while providing interaction between the users through a forum, sharing data and social network connections such as facebook and twitter tools all of which are targeted to provide feedbacks to the individual about energy consumption patterns. Within living lab approach, citizen's urban mobility related real-life experiences are examined in urban neighborhoods of Kadıköy, which is a central district of 500.000 inhabitants within the Istanbul Metropolitan Area in Turkey within the scope of this thesis.