Urban air mobility operations, such as flying Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and small passenger aircraft in and around cities, will be inherently susceptible to the turbulent wind conditions in urban environments. Therefore, understanding UAM aircraft performance under microscale wind disturbances is critical. Gaining such insight is non-trivial due to the lack of sufficient UAM aircraft operational data and the complexities involved in flight testing UAM aircraft. A viable solution to overcome this hindrance is through simulation-based flight testing, data collection, and performance assessment. To support this effort, the present paper establishes a custom Stochastic microscale Wind Model (SWM) capable of efficiently generating high-resolution, spatio-temporally varying urban wind fields. The SWM is validated against wind tunnel test data, and subsequently, the findings are employed to guide targeted refinements of urban wake simulation. Furthermore, to incorporate realistic atmospheric conditions and demonstrate the ability to generate location-specific wind fields, the SWM is coupled with the mesoscale Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. This integrated approach is demonstrated through a case study focused on a potential vertiport site in Milan, Italy, illustrating its utility for assessing operational area-specific UAM aircraft performance and vertiport emplacement.

Innovative mobility solutions, such as Urban Air Mobility, will have to be added to the existing, being anchored into an ongoing implementation process that is reshaping mobility under the drive of Mobility-as-a-Service. This leading force claims a mix of mobility layers within integrated platforms that increase the relevance of mobility hubs, reshaping them through digitalization. Each flow brings with it a series of requirements and iconographic elements that populate the space of mobility. Consequently, a tension arises in such places between the identity of the mobility spaces and the drive toward standardization and seriality embedded within them. The paper aims to investigate this relationship between the seek for identity and the need for seriality within mobility hubs. To do so, attention is set on already implemented mobility places. Therefore, the paper will focus on the case study of Milan’s Rho Fiera railway station and its related Rho Fiera Milano M1 metro station, to analyze the relationship between seriality and identity in the hub. This pathway opens to new possibilities for mobility innovations’ design to reconfigure contemporary infrastructures that can keep standing in a fast-changing environment.