The FUT programme - Dealing with complexity
FUT POLICY
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The Future Urban Transport (FUT) programme – how to deal with complexity – is a research programme financed by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF). The overarching aim of VREF is to contribute to the development of sustainable transportation systems.
People move to cities in order to move around in cities. Increasing standards of living increase the value of time and thus the search for faster transport and the increasing access that faster transport brings again widens the opportunities.
The scale of urbanisation now taking place globally is unprecedented and so are the challenges that cities have to meet when setting up and organising an urban transport system. Many cities are becoming overwhelmed by the combination of rapid growth of population and increased pressures for transport that the increased standard of living brings. Congestion slows cities down and makes the search for new opportunities that much harder.
Urban transport is rapidly becoming one of the major headaches of political leaders on city, regional and even national levels.
Environmental foot-print
A sustainable urban transport system has to be cost-effective, give adequate access also for the poor; and reduce the environmental foot-print compared to today’s urban transport. It requires enormous amounts of investments in infrastructure as well as sophisticated organisations that know how to operate the infrastructure and the services.
Part of the challenge is technological but the much bigger challenge is institutional, organisational and financial. So far no city has come close to a reasonably sustainable transport system.
Transforming today’s urban transport into a sustainable system is a huge challenge. Transport is a fundamental element of a hugely complex urban social and economic fabric extended over large amounts of land. Urban transport is therefore in itself a complex system where intervention in one place or of one kind can have unforeseen consequences in totally different places or aspects. Learning to understand this complexity is a key condition for managing this transformation.
The FUT programme was initiated in the year 2000 with this goal: coping with the complexity of urban transport with the aim to make urban transport more sustainable.
Extremely complex
The FUT programme rests on three cornerstones: a number of Centres of Excellence (CoE) with the goal of establishing an international network built on collaboration within and across scientific disciplines; a somewhat larger number of so-called Smaller Projects (SP) that complement the research at the CoEs and emphasize the role of young researchers in creating new knowledge; and regular FUT conferences that assemble FUT researchers as well as politicians, city planners, industrialists and other stakeholders. The research at every CoE is designed based on the insight that future transportation systems will be extremely complex. An interdisciplinary effort is required to develop new and better-adapted knowledge about how to handle an increasingly multifaceted development in large cities – and to arrive at useful and sustainable solutions. Every CoE is financed by VREF for five years at a level of SEK 25 million (ca. EUR 2.6 million). It is encouraged that each Centre will also attract additional funding.
It is important to consider local and regional conditions when exploring transportation solutions. Therefore, VREF is currently supporting seven Centres of Excellence in four regions of the world. To ensure the relevance of the research performed, the researchers at all of the Centres work in cooperation with the intended end users of their results. End users can include everyone from traffic and city planners to politicians, government agencies, policy makers and stakeholder organizations.
Parts of the whole
The Smaller Projects supported by VREF create opportunities to perform research on narrower questions related to key aspects of future urban transportation. Grants normally cover the cost of one researcher – often a doctoral student – for a period of two years, with the possibility of extension for an additional two years. The grants range in size from SEK 250 to 750 thousand (ca. EUR 26 to 79 thousand) per year.
FUT conferences are intended to provide links between the researchers in the program and between the researchers and stakeholders. The purpose is to create a platform where the main actors responsible for development and for urban transportation systems can meet and share experience. The conferences are organized by VREF’s Scientific Council and are held every 3rd year. Thus far, four conferences have been held, the latest one in April 2009.