Shared mobility at home: place-based pathways to low-carbon transport in dense urban housing

Extended abstract 6-007-26

Decarbonising urban mobility requires solutions that operate not only at the metropolitan scale but also within the place-specific infrastructures of everyday life. Our study investigates an innovative and underexplored residential-level mobility model: shared cars located directly within multi-unit apartment buildings in dense city centers, where parking is scarce and conventional car-sharing schemes often fail to reach family households. Using a mixed-methods approach—a survey of 500 residents and three focus groups with prospective users in a dense Israeli urban area—we examine both the behavioural drivers of vehicle ownership and the social, spatial, and organisational conditions that shape willingness to adopt building-based shared mobility. Unlike typical urban car-sharing users (young, educated, single, and car-free), our target group consists mainly of multi-person households, many of whom currently own two cars.

Findings show that while a substantial share of households is open to replacing a second private car with a shared vehicle, adoption is highly sensitive to micro-geographies such as parking shortages, neighbour relations, building governance, and perceived service quality and reliability. Adoption is shaped not only by cost and availability but also by trust, perceived cleanliness, and clarity of service terms, alongside a persistent desire to retain autonomy while reducing ownership burdens. The results highlight that residential shared mobility will only succeed if supported by a robust and context-appropriate business model.

We further explore how local municipalities and planning authorities can incentivize (or impede) a modal shift—from land-use regulation and parking policy to support for operators and building-level governance arrangements—thereby embedding shared mobility within socially just, low-carbon transport transitions.

By linking behavioural insights with the realities of residential infrastructure, our study demonstrates the need for place-based policy design that integrates parking regulation, residential governance, and mobility services.

Read the full abstract.

Download presentation.