The workshop focuses on the interaction between transport infrastructure and land use, following two complementary approaches: the transport economics approach and the urban design approach. Both disciplines are aimed at testing an integrated approach on the infrastructure projects, conceived as means of place-making and not only as a space of flows or a technical solution to fulfill a transport demand.
In this framework, the workshop aims at providing the students with the analytical and design tools to explore the relationship between infrastructure, urban spaces, mobility practices and economy, through lectures, seminars and practical activities.
The lectures are designed to introduce the main positions in the literature debate as well as innovative design and policy approaches about infrastructure and transport projects; mobility practices; rail transport and local public transport features as well as new transport supply; transport demand and transport modelling; dimensioning, integration and timetabling of services.
Lectures will be integrate with site tours, debates among practitioners, researchers and students to enrich the design projects working session.

The design activity is focused on the role of the regional rail services and its stations in low density areas in Lombardia Region, where the improving in the rail transport supply has affected the mobility practices and posed new challenges in term of interaction between land use and travel patterns.
With the aim to enhance the public investment on the regional rail network, the design activity will be finalized to investigate:

• How to value an investment in rail infrastructure in low-density areas where car use is important in mobility practices; 
• Which are the opportunities originated from changes in the accessibility of the station areas interested by the new infrastructural supply;
• How to improve the urban dimension of the stations to the surroundings, to the residual areas, as an essential condition to improve the integration between new transport supply and location, settling and functional reassessment plans, compared to experiences already tested abroad;
• Which density-driver can be used on selected stations, in order to increase accessibility supply and to suggest functional plans, sustainable both for environment and for economics, in settling and infrastructural landscape of some urban districts;
• Which tools could be proposed for a correct redistribution of the positive externalities originated by strengthening and developing the infrastructure system, land value capturing and catching up all the positive externalities created by public investments.

To address the issues, the main steps of the project will be:

• Describe the mobility in the area (supply and demand);
• Identify the role of the stations, analysing the transport (supply) and the place (demand and morpho-functional context) dimensions of the stations and its catchment area, and of the line as a whole;
• Reconstruct the settlement dynamics at the large scale that affect the mobility demand;
• Study the land use planning and urban transformation projects that modify the settlement density;
• Propose a classification of the stations for land use planning, and for the guidance and management of investments and the quality of stations;
• Study the supply and demand interaction due to new policies to be designed by students; preliminary sizing the infrastructure and the transport services.

The outcome of the students’ work will be on three topics, mutually integrated:

• Regenerating spaces, paths, services of a station district, improving its accessibility and the quality of its services;
• Proposing a new spatial development scenario, alternative to automobile-based land uses, densifying in some stations, according to specific profiles;
• Improving the public transport supply, interconnected with the stations, to expand their catchment area and to modify the modal split.
  

The lectures and further course materials are available on the Beep website.

For the final evaluations we will take into account:

• assessments of reading proposed during the lectures;
• outcomes of the workshop;
• examination of theoretical concepts.