AltMo was created as part of my master thesis project at Kiel University in Kiel, Germany. The program itself was called, "Sustainability, Society and the Environment" and while in this program, I had the chance to focus my studies on urban development and in particular mobility within cities.
Having come from the United States (Portland, Oregon specifically), I only grew up knowing automobile dominant transit systems, and although alternative forms of transportation are beginning to gain traction there, the sobering reality still remains that the car is king. Many everyday tasks such as buying food from a grocery store become increasingly impossible without a car because of the distances that need to be traveled.
As I arrived here in Germany to begin my studies, one thing that struck me about Kiel was its urban density and the fact that going without a car is much more possible in many areas of the city (much more than where I grew up). All of this too from a city that would not even breach the top 50 U.S. cities by population size. The type of urban density found in Kiel would only be found in the largest metropolitan regions of the U.S.
Clearly, there was something going on about the way this city was laid out and organized, compared to what I had been used to before. Therefore, I started to ask myself, "how could I visualize and see the differences?" and "what kind of things could I learn about in Kiel in the process?" These were just some of the questions that started me down the road to my eventual thesis topic.
This website is dedicated to the work I did to answer these questions and more along the way. I hope you enjoy the work. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions regarding the methodologies (click here for the contact form)