Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Research and Transformation (SMART)
On July 1, 2009, the SMART project was officially launched to a new permanent home on the U-M campus. SMART is now jointly affiliated with the U-M Transportation Research Institute and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The SMART project has proven to be very successful at building Interdisciplinary teams and networks which are creatively advancing new solutions for transportation problems, and CARSS is proud to have been able to help the project to prove itself and become established.
SMART (Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Research and Transformation) focuses on sustainable transportation and accessibility in city regions of the world. This is both timely and relevant as the global challenge of urban mobility becomes rapidly more vexing and complex. The accelerating pace of urbanization, population growth, globalization, and demographic shifts is leading increasingly to transportation systems that threaten climate, environment, biodiversity, energy security, social equity, productivity, and urban competitiveness. Yet the vital role of mobility and accessibility to meeting our daily personal and business needs cannot be denied.
SMART takes a unique systems approach to understanding and transforming the future of urban mobility and accessibility. Moving beyond the technical fix alone, it "connects the dots," bringing together the various disciplines and sectors, the players, the theoretical approaches and the practical applications required to tackle urban transportation's growing complexity, sophistication, impacts, and opportunities.
Through collaborative, trans-disciplinary, multi-sectoral research, through on-the ground projects, and through academic programs, SMART concentrates in four main research and action areas:
- Systems-based analysis and solution-building
- Accessibility-based planning and policy making
- Sustainability – environmental, social, and economic
- New Mobility markets – identifying and developing new markets and business models
SMART's innovative, integrative, applied approach carves a unique niche as a go-to place for whole systems solution-building that works to address the mobility and accessibility challenges of the 21st century.
SMART brings together the efforts of a wide range of academic and industrial partners: the Center for the Study of Complex Systems, the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning (TCAUP), the Ross School of Business, the School of Natural Resources & Environment (SNRE), the Institute for Social Research (ISR), the department of Applied Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering (and Wu Manufacturing Research Center), the Ford School of Public Policy, the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP), the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), the school of Literature Science & the Arts (LS & A), and the Ford Motor Company, and others.
Contact: Susan Zielinski
Phone: 734-763-1190
Email: susanz@umich.edu
SMART Web site
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