Under the title "Utopia meets reality: new ways of mobility and urban design" on September 18, 2025, we discussed with around 100 guests at the Deutsches Museum Verkehrszentrum how visions can shape our cities and mobility of the future.
The visual utopian Jan Kamensky presented his latest vision in cooperation with the Munich S-Bahn: Munich's Hackerbrücke from a utopian perspective. His lecture impressively showed how utopias help us to critically question the status quo and gain new food for thought for today.
In the discussion that followed, he emphasized Dr. Sonja Rube (USP Projekte GmbH) the key aspects of successful transformation:
Change requires disruptive changes and cultural change.
Public spaces are emotional transformation projects.
The future is a social negotiation process.
Participation, co-creation and discourse are essential.
Contradictions are an important resource.
Transformation requires professional management.
Karsten Lang (Deutsche Bahn / S-Bahn Munich) was a reminder that great visions can be realized: It only took six years from the idea to the first trip on the Munich S-Bahn - an example of joint vision and decisive action.
Mareike Schmidt (TUM Urban Design, MCube MOSAIQ) used specific projects to show how visions can be put into practice. She emphasized the importance of negotiation processes in order to develop viable solutions and define common goals.
Our conclusion: Visions are created by working together. Through participation, co-creation and courageous decisions, we can turn them into reality step by step.
The lessons learned from the first MCube funding phase show which factors really drive projects forward - and where typical barriers arise.
Creating transparency, proving impact, sharpening strategies - the new indicator guide supports precisely this.
For the first time in this format, students made their way to three European cities. They went to Stockholm, Tallinn/Helsinki and Barcelona.
This time, mobility in the cities of Ljubljana, Genoa and Utrecht was examined.
How can mobility data and simulations make cities more liveable - and change visible and tangible?
What do Brussels, Lisbon, Milan and Paris have in common?
Where to put cars, bicycles and e-scooters - and how do we organize parking space fairly, efficiently and sustainably?
The Mobi-Score - The hidden costs of mobility at a glance
Resilient change towards sustainable mobility - lessons for a transformative urban mobility policy
Experimenting for the mobility transition - impetus for municipalities to dealing with real-world laboratories
What is MOSAIQ?
Imagine something: There is more space for people. The streets have more trees and plants. Everyone can get around better. That's how your Schwabing-West district could be in the future. How would you like your district to be? We want to talk to you about it!
The project is called MOSAIQ. MOSAIQ is a research∙project. MOSAIQ means: Mobility and urban climate in the future city∙part. The Technical University of Munich is leading the project.
What is MOSAIQ about?
MOSAIQ wants to make the streets in the city∙part more beautiful. People should feel comfortable there. There should be more space. For meetings and plants, for example. You can help decide what is tried out in the Stadt∙teil. The ideas come from you. Some ideas will be tried out on the streets for a certain period of time.
The aim of MOSAIQ is to make urban districts good places to live.
At the same time, the climate in the city should improve. And people should be able to move around the city easily.
What is happening in the district?
