Dimensions of urban mobility cultures – a comparison of German cities Thomas Klinger a,⇑ , Jeffrey R. Kenworthy a,b , Martin Lanzendorf a a Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main, Department of Human Geography, Frankfurt/Main, Germany b Curtin University, Sustainability Policy Institute, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia article info Keywords: Cluster analysis Germany Mobility culture Mode choice Perception Travel behaviour abstract In the context of the immense economic and social challenges urban transport faces in the near future, the analysis of city-specific differences in supply and usage of urban transport systems is a promising approach for identifying potential strategies for establishing more sustainable transport systems and mobility patterns. This study aims to address such differences by a comparative approach and is, to our best knowledge, the first one capturing the subjective dimension of urban mobility by integrating sat- isfaction and perception-related indicators at a city-level. Drawing on the socio-technical concept of urban mobility cultures, which combines socio-economic and urban form characteristics, mode-specific infrastructure supply, as well as the travel behaviour and underlying attitudes of a city’s inhabitants, we collected a set of 23 indicators from several sources, mainly from the early 2000s. These data have been applied to a sample of 44 German cities. As a result of a factor and cluster analysis we identified six groups of cities ranging from relatively mature and homogenous socio-technical settings, referred to as ‘cycling cities’ or ‘transit metropolises’, to rather less well-defined urban mobility cultures such as ‘transit cities with multimodal potential’, whose forthcoming development is not yet directed towards a specific future and, therefore, is open for political debate. The mismatch between objective and subjective indi- cators of urban mobility culture that has been shown for some city groups is another starting-point for changing urban mobility cultures in terms of taking people’s perceptions and evaluations of the local transport system more seriously. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Climate change, peak oil and unsustainable traffic volumes are serious challenges for the future development of metropolitan areas worldwide. While the international debate still discusses the role and contribution of the transport sector in these issues and, furthermore, appropriate policies for guiding future develop- ment in certain directions, an international comparison of metro- politan areas suggests that even under the same regulatory framework, cities have options for shaping their own future devel- opments. For example, some cities like Copenhagen (Denmark), Groningen (Netherlands) or Münster (Germany) are well-known ‘good practice’ communities with high shares of bicycling usage, while others are named ‘‘transit metropolises’’ (Cervero, 1998). To explain these differences in travel patterns at the city-level two main approaches have been established: Whereas some researchers have highlighted the impact of objective criteria such as urban form and socio-economics, others focus more on the subjective dimension represented by individual preferences and attitudes towards mobility. To bridge the explanatory gap between these perspectives, the approach presented here is to test empirically the mobility culture concept, which is a theoretical and integrated framework including both objective and subjective parameters. The term urban mobility cultures encompasses both material and symbolic elements of a transport system as part of a specific socio-cultural setting, which consists of mobility-related discourses and political strategies on the one hand and institutionalised travel patterns and the built environment on the other hand (Deffner et al., 2006, p. 16; Götz and Deffner, 2009). Consequently, we capture the concept of urban mobility cul- tures by developing a set of 23 indicators, which reflects particular elements of the concept. Furthermore, we apply the indicator set to a sample of 44 German cities by undertaking a factor and cluster analysis and eventually identifying six groups of similar mobility cultures within our city-sample. This approach is, to our best knowledge, the first one to quantify subjective parameters such as mobility-related evaluations and perceptions at a city-level and combine them with rather common objective data, such as land use and socio-economic characteristics. The categorisation suggested in our analysis reveals that there are mature mobility 0966-6923/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2013.05.002 ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main, Department of Human Geography, Grüneburgplatz 1, D-60323 Frankfurt/Main, Germany. Tel.: +49 69 798 35172; fax: +49 69 798 35180. E-mail address: klinger@geo.uni-frankfurt.de (T. Klinger). Journal of Transport Geography 31 (2013) 18–29 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Transport Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo