Urban canals and canalized rivers are being used for many different human uses. We investigated current and future use in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Toronto (Canada)*. Our results show that demand for most use functions will increase by 2040. This increase is most prominent for transportation, for thermal energy extraction for heating and cooling of buildings, and for recreation including swimming. Besides, demand for new uses is emerging such as the beneficial use of products from waterway maintenance and local climate regulation. The changes in demand for urban surface water uses in Amsterdam and Toronto are driven by developments that occur in many cities such as climate change, urban regeneration and sustainability ambitions. With increasing pressure to use urban surface water for different uses, it becomes important to get insight into the suitability of urban canals for desired use functions and how this may be improved. Such insights will support function-oriented planning, design and maintenance of urban surface water. This may be useful for existing waters but also for new water bodies that are created in urban regeneration areas or as part of climate change adaptation strategies. Suitability indices can be used to assess suitability based on a water bodies’ characteristics. The suitability analysis also shows which attributes of the water body should be altered to improve suitability. A study in Amsterdam and Ghent (Belgium) shows how the suitability of urban canals and canalized rivers can be improved for transportation, thermal energy extraction and swimming. First, we rated current suitability on a five-class scale: unsuitable, low, fair, good or excellent. In most parts of the water system in Amsterdam, suitability for thermal energy extraction is rated ‘good’, suitability for transportation is ‘fair’ and for recreation suitability is ‘low’. An indicative analysis in Ghent shows comparable suitability for transport and swimming; for thermal energy extraction results are uncertain. Second, we assessed which waterbody characteristics should be altered to improve suitability. The outcomes of this analysis will be presented in detail for Amsterdam and will be compared with the indicative analysis in Ghent. The outcomes can be used by urban planners, designers and water managers to optimize urban waters for important human uses. This research is part of AMS project URBAN PULSE II * Van der Meulen, E. S., Sutton, N. B., van de Ven, F. H. M., van Oel, P. R., & Rijnaarts, H. H. M. (2020). Trends in Demand of Urban Surface Water Extractions and in Situ Use Functions. Water Resources Management, 34(15), 4943-4958. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-020-02700-7

The eHUBs project is one of the main projects within the Smart Mobility Programme of the municipality of Amsterdam. EHUBS are on-street locations that bring together e-bikes, e-cargo bikes, e-scooters and/or e-cars, offering users a wide range of options to experiment and use in various situations. The idea is to give an high-quality and diverse offer of shared electric mobility services to dissuade citizens from owning private cars, resulting in cleaner, more liveable and pleasant cities. The main goal is to build 15-20 eHUBs in targeted areas in Amsterdam, in cooperation with commercial transport providers. So far 10 hubs' have been in different city disctricts. Now that the first insights are known it's time to focus on the bigger picture: how can hubs be scaled up throughout the whole city so that every citizen can use shared mobility within walking distance?

Sustainable mobility could reduce environmental impacts, improve social mobility, and promote sustainable and liveable cities. Disruptive innovations, such as automated minibuses (AM), are poised to reshape urban mobility and achieve sustainable mobility goals. Therefore, it is important to study AM's potential forms of deployment to ensure their integration with public transportation. Specifically, AM as a form of public transport could reduce mobility's societal and environmental impact in urban areas. An economic method to analyse these impacts is external costs. External costs analysis presents a way to quantify the implications of introducing AM within the transport system. They present indirect and uncompensated impacts, such as air pollution and congestion. This study focuses on potential future scenarios of AM in cities. It estimates the increase or decrease in external costs (comparing before and after introducing AM) as well as the effect on parking space. It provides insights into how AM could contribute to a sustainable transformation of cities. The study presents six potential scenarios focused on the potential modal shift caused by AM and their relation to public transport network and the associated external costs results. For instance, replacing all car trips in the city centre with AM services leads to the highest decrease in external costs, while replacing all diesel bus trips with AM causes an increase in externalities. Moreover, the results vary by the type of services offered and the area (urban or suburban) where the AM are introduced. This assessment provides policymakers with prescient methods to avoid disruptive innovations' drawbacks and utilise them to achieve sustainable urban development.