Swiping to find the right home: 'MoMa' as an elaboration of the mobility and spatial development framework.

Build, build, build. That is the task facing every province. And this is happening while the space for building new homes is only becoming scarcer and governments simultaneously want to achieve numerous other policy goals. This combination makes spatial developments complex challenges.

Mobility is not a side issue in this, but the key: a move is the moment when people review their travel behavior and can start traveling more sustainably. Therefore, mobility must be integrated from the very first sketch for a spatial development.

A framework for mobility in spatial development

That is the core of the mobility and spatial development framework, which was developed by &Morgen, Movares, and the Province of Overijssel. It offers a design principle to ensure that mobility in a spatial development moves in tandem with housing, livability, and facilities from day one.

The framework consists of three steps:

1. The Mobility Program of Requirements (MPvE) establishes the mobility ambitions.
2. The Mobility Plan translates these into concrete choices for connections, parking, and shared mobility.
3. An Implementation Plan ensures execution, monitoring, and adjustment.

Following these steps results in more support, a clearer process, and a stronger connection between policy and execution.

To ensure this idea did not remain purely theoretical, Connekt organized a meeting for young professionals from the Connekt network in May. The assignment: design a concept in groups that makes the framework visible relatively quickly and practically, and pitch it to the audience. One concept stood out. That idea added a link that is often overlooked in the practice of spatial development: how the mobility concept works for the resident themselves.

The winning idea: focus on the resident

The winning team applied this to a practical case: Weezenlanden-Noord, a central area in Zwolle. The ambitions are already there: lower parking standards, a communal bicycle storage area next to the lobby, and access to shared cars. These plans align with what the framework aims for, but this immediately brings the next question to the table: will the (future) residents actually use it this way?

The team reasoned as follows: spatial developers often think thoroughly about what kind of mobility concept fits an area, but pay too little attention to who will eventually live there. If you focus on shared cars and an easily accessible bicycle storage area, while the eventual residents are primarily car-minded, the plans turn out to be better on paper than in practice.

"MoMa": a cross between Funda and Tinder

The solution pitched by the team consists of two mutually reinforcing components: a resident plan and a matching app, dubbed MobilityMatch ('MoMa') by the team.

The resident plan is a new component within the framework. It is an additional step between the Mobility Program of Requirements and the Mobility Plan that answers the question: what type of resident fits the mobility ambitions of this development? This goes further than the usual target group analysis within the Mobility Program of Requirements. The resident plan does not categorize residents by life stage (elderly, students, etc.), but by desired behavior: what facilities do these people use, where do they work, and how do they want to move around in the future?

The app then makes that resident plan workable. Potential residents make choices by filtering for mobility themes in addition to wishes and requirements for the home itself: do I need a car, do I want to participate in shared mobility, am I open to community mobility? They then see which spatial developments fit those criteria and where they can live, matching their wishes. Just like apps like Tinder, the app holds up a mirror to people: if you indicate that you do not need a car, more developments might become available. Those who do value a car are more likely to be directed to a development in a rural area than to a densely built, low-traffic neighborhood.

The benefit of better matching

The effect works both ways. Developers get residents who actually fit the chosen mobility concept, and residents find an environment that aligns with how they want to live and travel—something they often would not even have considered without the app.

Once you know who is going to live there, you can also deploy concepts that would otherwise never get off the ground. Community mobility is the clearest example. Having residents carpool on fixed days or take the children to school together only works if there are enough residents who want to do that. The same applies to a Homeowners' Association (VvE) that jointly owns a shared car or shared bicycle. The spatial design then helps: keeping cars out of sight discourages use even before anyone lives there and increases the attractiveness of new concepts.

Rewarding works better than mandating

The team was critical of itself: someone who really wants a house can easily promise the desired behavior during matching without subsequently following through. "I don't need a car" then becomes a white lie that ultimately works out well for no one. Not for the resident, nor for the environment.

Enforcing rules is counterproductive in this regard. Just like on Tinder, where frequent 'liking' is punished algorithmically, a reward is more effective than a ban. Think of a bonus plan with local entrepreneurs, where you save points for discounts at nearby shops. Social pressure does the rest, the team expects: living among people who do adhere to the concept corrects itself automatically.

At the same time, a good matching system is still no guarantee of success: concepts still deserve the monitoring and flexibility that the Implementation Plan already prescribes. The team recommends starting with matching mobility forms that are less dependent on voluntary participation, such as parking standards. Softer forms like community mobility can build on that once enough interested residents are living there.

Back to the framework

What this idea shows above all is that the framework is not limited to infrastructure or spatial design. By including the resident, the person who will live there becomes just as explicit a part of the design as the bicycle route or the hub. Mobility thus becomes not an afterthought, but a principle that starts with the question of who will get the key.

Whether MoMa will ever be built as an actual app remains to be seen. But the idea behind it is already usable. Developers and municipalities can already include the core question of the resident plan in their own MPvEs today: not only determining which mobility concept fits an area, but also which residents are willing to commit to the behavior required within the concept. This increases the chance that ambitions, such as reduced car use and car ownership in certain areas, do not remain limited to a paper reality. This is how the mobility transition is made possible in practice.

Want to know more about this idea or receive the mobility and spatial development framework? Then please contact us.