Challenge description

The city of Ferrara - like many other urban areas in Europe - is experiencing traffic congestion and air pollution.

On the other hand, the more peripheral areas of the province undergo a process of depopulation, leading to social disaggregation and paving the way for economic impoverishment, due also to the lack of services - an efficient mobility network first of all - in those areas.

That's why the still simple (but great) landscape-symbiosis idea is to make through the existing rich landscape a well inter-connected huge metropolis (from Bondeno on the West to Comacchio on the East with Ferrara in the middle) where people - on demand - could easily and quickly move from a logistic hub to another by boat and bike/bus, thus "re-using" what the rich landscape already offers in terms of low-impact mobility infrastructures.

The new intermodal mobility solution should therefore positively impact on the whole provincial territory/landscape in multiple ways: in terms of environment/climate (less private cars = less air pollution, less CO2 emissions), at social level (since the peripheral areas will be populated again, improving the quality of living) and last but not least for economic aspects (the re-population of those areas will kick-off diffuse refurbishment/retrofitting measures also at building level and therefore contributing to creating new jobs, while the territory regeneration will also attract new tourists) as well.

Challenge vision

Today, even though nearly 30% of Ferrara inhabitants move by bike (the city is also known as "the bikes city") and despite great efforts by relevant mobility actors (such as the mobility agency in support of the public transport), private cars are still largely used for reaching the city from the peripheral areas, as this seems today the most effective mobility option.

While this happens, with negative impacts either at environmental or social level, Ferrara has a great mobility opportunity - unexplored so far - in its same valuable landscape (most of the concerned areas are UNESCO or Nature2000 heritage) and orography made of existing waterways and canals, dismissed railways lines, cycle lanes, natural walks.

The specific objectives of this challenge are:

1. identify social and economic needs of the area considered and highlight governance issues needed for implementing the idea;
2. explore possible business model options, identifying the most relevant stakeholders.