SCC-CIVIC-PG Track A: Shared MicromobIlity for affordabLe-accessIblE houSing (SMILIES)

This project presents SMILIES (Shared MicromobIlity for affordabLe-accessIblE houSing): a community-engaged pilot project to improve the accessibility to jobs and essential activities for affordable housing communities in small- and mid-sized cities and rural areas by leveraging the explosive growth of shared micromobility (SMM) services. Affordable-accessible housing for working families is increasingly scarce in the U.S., in particular for small- and mid-sized cities and rural areas.

As many small- and mid-sized cities offer only limited public transportation options, low-income residents living in those areas may struggle to access jobs, and critical goods and services. The SMILIES project will deploy SMMs in a mid-sized city to establish the business, operating, and sociodemographic conditions under which SMM can improve accessibility to jobs and essential activities (e.g., schools, shopping, recreation, and health care) for affordable housing communities.

Defining such conditions will facilitate the development and evaluation of new, highly effective and cost-effective policies and strategies that will help cities and planning agencies leverage SMM while ensuring equitable distribution of these services.

The overall objective of this project is to determine the degree of impact that SMM services can have on accessibility to jobs and essential activities, household transportation costs, and energy consumption for residents of affordable housing communities in small- and mid-sized cities, and rural areas. This objective will be accomplished by developing a community-engaged research-centered pilot project in the City of Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The specific objective of this planning grant proposal is to strengthen collaborations with relevant stakeholders, solidify academic and civic team members’ roles, and refine the vision and plan for executing this research-centered pilot project. This project is transformative as it will leverage community engagement (residents, decision makers, operators) to first define acceptable conditions for SMM and then conduct real-world pilot deployments of SMM under the community-defined conditions.

This project is in response to Track A – CIVIC Innovation Challenge - Communities and Mobility a collaboration with NSF and the Department of Energy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.