Dr Chris De Gruyter thinks a great deal about the future of our cities and how new residential developments affects the transport system.
During his Vice-Chancellor Fellowship, he established Transport@RMIT as part of the Urban Futures Platform, a network formed to bring together transport researchers and educators across RMIT to enhance, promote and deploy the University's interdisciplinary capability in transport.
De Gruyter notes "there were many researchers working individually or in their own schools, but not much cross-School activity going on in transport at RMIT."
The network hosted a number of workshops and activities, and by the end of 2020, over 100 researchers had joined this thriving community. De Gruyter also coordinated the preparation of a Transport Capability Statement for the University.
Along with fellow network members, and with the support of Urban Futures’ funding, De Gruyter developed a series of policy and practice briefs:
- Car Parking Provisions for Residential Apartments
- Transport Congestion
- Transport Impacts of New High-density Housing and Emerging Transport Technologies
The way these briefs were designed and disseminated was for De Gruyter "useful, because it would allow me to get my research out in another way that I typically couldn't have done through a journal article."
