With growing urban populations, higher mobility needs, limited available space for transport infrastructure, and the increasing need for more attractive urban areas, these urban areas are faced with a complex dilemma, which gets more challenging by the day. This paper examines the role of flexibility in the relationship between structural spatial development and passenger transport, its economic, environmental, and social perspectives, the long-term impacts of this relationship and the role of this relationship in developing countries. The paper identifies the need for a better understanding of long-term flexibility in development options in order to make better future-proof decisions as a key research avenue, and sets a pathway to achieve this. Main research gaps as identified in the paper include the lack of understanding on the potential for flexibility in optimizing the structural spatial development and passenger transport relationship, the valuation of flexibility, and the application of flexibility approaches in developing countries. This paper emphasizes the importance of acting sooner rather than later, since the future costs of sub-optimal development are rising by the day and the bill is being pushed towards future generations.

Is it possible for flexible applications of infrastructure to help cope with the demand for space? In this paper we tried to answer how different forms of flexibility can impact the societal costs of infrastructure development on passenger transport hubs. For this explorative research option, the value is used to determine these impacts. It is applied to charging infrastructure for electric buses at the Amsterdam Central Station. It shows the challenge in setting up a collective approach towards attaining the optimal societal impact, due to limited knowledge on the potential of flexibility, the complexity in setting up a win-win for each stakeholder based on their different interests and the lacking ownership of the overall collective impact that can be made. The remaining question is, will there be a way out?