Open Access

Marie-Louise Leppert

• Across the globe, urban areas experience the phenomena of rising road-congestion, air pollution and car accidents. These are just a few popular quantified effects that arise due to rapid, uncoordinated urbanization on a car-centric city layout. There is an urgent need to consider new concepts of urban mobility development to combat these negative effects. Car-free mobility is one notion adopted in diverse formats by numerous cities to create a more inclusive, just, healthy and sustainable urban life. The focus of this thesis is to ex- amine whether a car-free mobility concept is applicable to the Maun Science Park, Bot- swana. Therefore, the idea of car-free mobility, its positive aspects as well as its con- straints, are described first. This illustrates the complexity of urban transport planning as it is intertwined with urban land-use, political vision and people’s perceptions and behav- iors. Secondly, examples and strategies on how to change existing structures are pre- sented. Following this, the smart developments in the field of sustainable urban mobility are considered to provide an insight into their assets and drawbacks. Then the local mo- bility conditions are examined before the car-free concept is exemplarily applied to the Maun Science Park via scenario construction. These scenarios give a first vision of how a car-free concept can be applied to the MSP and additionally provide a starting point for future strategic planning as well as inspiration for other cities to follow along.