CNR ITC & CIB WG84 INTERNATIONAL MEETING, ROME 2002
Improving Urban Quality For Pedestrians: The Potentialities
Of An Integrated Design For Mobility In Outdoor Spaces
Lucia Martincigh
Università Roma 3, Dipartimento di Progettazione e Scienze dell’Architettura,
Via Madonna de’ Monti n. 40, 00184 – Roma, Italy
Abstract
Within towns and cities, mobility, as currently structured, means above all vehicular traffic; this, due to its many negative consequences, can be ranked as one of the main casual factors of the urban environment de-qualification process now in progress. Such awareness induces to consider the mobility reorganization as a major social and political issue; this transformation has to be planned with a precise goal: the constitution of a sustainable mobility system. This means a mobility saving energy and land, less polluting and endangering, more equitable and more respectful of everybody’s rights of using the common public space.
The experiences already achieved in various European Countries, take to set that this reorganization must be based on some fixed points: improvement of urban and suburban transportation and of intermodality, also with non motorized travel modes; reduction of personal vehicles use; promotion of collective and public transport modes for the longest routes, and of non motorized travel modes for the shortest ones. The concomitance of such actions has manifold positive consequences; some direct ones, as traffic reduction and congestion fluidification, air and noise pollution decrease, accessibility and safety increase; and some indirect ones, as improvement of health conditions and decrease of traffic accidents for the most vulnerable users, and thence social costs reduction.
Up to now, the constant increase of the private vehicle traffic and its invasive character have worsened the liveability of the urban environment and, as consequence, have contributed to a decrease in the share of non motorized transport modes. It is necessary to break this negative circular process that is destroying more and more the real essence of the city. The rebalancing of mobility must be in favour of these transport modes, and in particular of walking; it must therefore impress on the structure of the mobility system: components and speeds, weights and hierarchies.
A process of re-appropriation of the intermediate spaces, particularly needed in pericentral or peripherical residential districts, will start off; a re-design of these spaces, aimed at providing a continuous network with pedestrian priority, will follow, so to increase accessibility, safety, comfort and attractiveness for the most vulnerable users.
Since mobility and urban quality issues are strictly interdependent, this rehabilitation process must be characterized by a comprehensive and integrative approach, for which it is necessary to refer to various expertises and to apply specific innovative strategies and technical measures.
State of the Art
International researches on sustainable mobility and on vulnerable users are manifold[1]. The EC, drawing scenarios that integrate urban planning and design, sustainable mobility, energy and social aspects for improving both life and urban environment quality, has funded in the IV and V Framework Program of Research and Technology, researches of remarkable entity and thematic networks, in order to identify and coordinate innovative policies and strategies, methodologies and measures to develop a sustainable urban mobility[2]. Therefore a great expertise has been achieved on how the problems have to be faced and on the possible solutions. The approaches are in continuous progress and the adoptable techniques grow more and more refined; the attitudes, in few years’ time, have been changing from focusing on a precise aspect: the increase of safety, to a much broader view, taking into consideration a wide range of performances to offer to pedestrians, and combining land use with traffic and transport planning.
Unfortunately, there is still a great gap between theory and praxis, research and practice.
Most of the European Countries are committed in adopting national safety programs and in funding related studies, campaigns and implementations aimed at improving the environment for the most vulnerable users, and at promoting pedestrian mobility and biking together with the use of traffic calming measures. There are therefore model cases, in greater or smaller number depending on the Country, but their spread is not such that allows saying that they represent the praxis. This can be said only when making a comparison with the Italian situation; the difference is indeed abysmal!
In Italy indeed these issues are not so rooted yet, in fact neither the quantity of research nor the implementation models are comparable to what is going on in the other European Countries. The lack of involvement shows very clearly when looking for data on pedestrian mobility, both for the trips made on foot and for the ancillary walking; a report from ISTAT on various aspects of everyday life gives useful indications, but absolutely not sufficient to define in any way the behaviours or the aptitudes, in using the urban space, that could induce the users to choose walking as an alternative transport mode, or withdraw them from doing it[3].
Some local administrations pay a greater attention to these issues, but generally they still conceive only “pedestrianization” as possible solution, because it is a well rooted, typical Italian tradition. Since many years ago indeed, in the cities’ oldest and most prestigious areas, many “pedestrian islands” have been realized by the total exclusion of the vehicle traffic. The reason why lies above all in the protection of the monuments and of the so called historical centres from the decay induced by air pollution. The solution of locating pedestrian islands only in the peculiar, valuable parts of the urban structure, during the years, has introduced a new type of zoning, devastating the continuous character of the city, and boosting the caesura between the old parts and the newer ones.
The rare times that spaces devoted to pedestrians are implemented in synergy with some kind of vehicular mobility control, the activities are sporadic, the technical solutions are often outdated, in short the whole is “imported” without thoroughly realizing, or sharing, its fundamentals. It misses the culture of the pedestrian priority at the source, and also the research/practice connection. Italy is indeed, for various reasons, still strongly clung to the car culture.
Up to now, the policies and strategies chosen at national, and sometimes also at local level have targeted mainly the reduction of air pollution levels, due to the use of cars, and not the promotion of pedestrian mobility. They have not succeeded in reducing the traffic volume, but only in diverting it from the core of the cities to the outskirts, from the cars to the mopeds and motorcycles. This is due also to the people responses, who do not accept well, and hamper, many of the suggested measures; however it seems that something is starting to change. There are of course some exceptions: Municipalities which are more enlightened and in the lead.
There are though laws and regulations that would allow up-to-date activities and implementations.
The Italian Legislative Framework
In Italy, the National Plan for Road Safety, quite recently approved[4], finally considered that many safety problems lie in the urban areas and with the most vulnerable categories; the related national competition, for co-funding, implementing and monitoring 200 Pilot Projects, proposed and elaborated by Town Municipalities and Provinces technicians and experts from all over the Country, was meant to establish a best practice and a data base[5].
These two events have, in some way, pointed out the effectiveness of enforcing the two most important legislative tools for the urban mobility management: Mobility Plans and, in particular, Urban Traffic Plans. Their prescriptions are in step with the relevant European positions on the subject; the most innovative aspects, as for the matter in hand, regard the consideration of “pedestrians as a main component” in all traffic matters, and the establishment of the “Environmental Island”, a prescriptive instrument to manage urban mobility at local level[6].
In the elaboration of these plans, it is possible, and appropriate, to refer also to other specific laws which deal with aspects that are directly related to the mobility management, and in particular to cars circulation control and restrictions, as for example: the Law about the Acoustic Recovery Plan[7], the air quality legislation[8] and the institution of the Mobility Manager[9], all aimed at preventing or reducing negative effects on public health and environment, at decreasing car use and promoting more sustainable transport modes. The same applies to another important, innovative law that is connected, also if indirectly, with the possibility or the enhancement of walking; it concerns the elimination of any barrier for improving the accessibility and the use of the urban space by the people with reduced mobility (according to the European Parliament definition: PRM); this tool takes to consider, since the first approach to the plan or design, solutions that examine the exigencies of all the users on their whole[10]. The planning and design at local level can also avail of many other legislative instruments or political initiatives, that here for the sake of brevity are left out.
The Environmental Island
The knowledge and experience acquired in carrying out, together with the interdisciplinary group I coordinate, some basic and applied national and European researches on the topic[11], have allowed to deepen the concept of “Environmental Island” as outlined by the law, and to individuate the problems, the limits and the potentialities of its implementation; this paper deals then with some considerations and findings on this subject: some guide lines to delimit and define an Environmental Island, applying the interventions that the circular foresees or adumbrates, widening in this case their purport; a methodology to analyse and design the inner spaces devoted to mobility, making use of up-to-date techniques, both for the vehicular and pedestrian infrastructure re-organization.
The principle of the “environmental area” was first proposed by Buchanan in 1963 and has been dealt with in other studies up to the organization proposed by Greibe et al. in 1997; all these models stressed a traffic network based on the hierarchy and categories of roads, on speed limits and safety. In many European Countries now there are “30 km/h areas” that are the evolution of these models.
The concept of “liveability” of the urban environment is a new thought that seems typical of the “Environmental Island” considered in the Italian legislation of 1995, and that can be interpreted and perceived as a chance for urban residential areas upgrading. It is worth to underline that such means, characterized by an up-to-date layout, after so many years have not yet been implemented in a widespread way, perhaps because their innovative content has not been caught yet, or because the required interdisciplinary slant is not a common habit.
In an English report, published about two years ago by the British DETR, it was suggested the investigation of a similar approach to face, in a comprehensive way, the rehabilitation of urban residential areas, naming “Home Zone”; Great Britain is implementing now various Home Zones.
The Environmental Islands, unlike the Pedestrian Islands, allow to maintain the urban continuity; they indeed can be ruled and structured in their hinterland to allow the coexistence of different types of mobility, motorized and non motorized, with various mutual benefit; this approach brings to a pedestrian network dotted by pedestrian areas, mixed together with, and supported by, a calmed vehicular mobility. They can be then thought connected one to the other, or to other sectors of the city with a different regimen.
The Environmental Island is defined as a “single urban zone included in the main roads network, with the aim of recovering the liveability of the urban spaces”; it is practicable in mainly residential districts, that are crossed by local roads only; it has to be individuated as a micro urban environment that, thanks to the services, facilities, landscape and townscape features, can satisfy the needs of everyday life dwellers. This prescriptive instrument allows to consider pedestrians as the core of the mobility planning and to apply pedestrian priority, consequently to reduce private vehicles circulation and to control car speed levels by different devices, for improving the safety and the accessibility of the most vulnerable users.
In the planning then various solutions can be adopted, that go from the strict separation of the flows to their coexistence. The solutions have to be studied time by time, but it is possible to speak of some main characteristics: an area with a radius from a minimum of 500 to a maximum of 1000 m, that is a distance covered easily by any category of users, identifiable by ideal or real boundaries; a road system based on a “rooms and corridor” layout, with one way roads, for parking and local traffic, and a ring or a U shaped two ways distribution road; with determents from through traffic and illegal parking, and with a vehicular speed lowered to 30 km/h. The local streets can be completely reorganized, with the aim not only of satisfying parking but also of giving pedestrians a wider part of walking and/or resting areas, to be dimensioned and equipped in a way suitable to satisfy their expectations, and finally to fulfil the “pedestrian network continuity”.
Urban Quality for Pedestrians
The urban quality of the spaces dedicated to pedestrians is tightly related to their possibilities of mobility, of exchange and of relationship; it varies in function of the users, of the places and of their various specific uses, and above all changes with times and with the related culture, habits, tastes and considerations; it is then a relative value, and as such it is not easily defined and cannot be settled once for all.
Since the aim is to make the urban spaces appealing for every class of users, it is important to understand, on the one hand, who are the pedestrians and what they expect from the urban settings in which they perform their various activities; on the other one, to define which are the features of the urban environment that are considered more “significant” and valuable by pedestrians.
When speaking of urban quality then, it is necessary to deal contemporarily with two different aspects, on one side with the people’s expectations and cultural habits, and on the other one with the urban environment’s propositions; the more these two aspects meet, the higher level of overall quality is reached.
For the former, the studies on pedestrians’ problems and needs run by Olof Gunnarsson, and the ones on people’s behaviours and habits run by Jan Gehl, are in this sense very interesting and valuable[12]; for the latter the techniques used by Kevin Lynch to read the city, the comprehension of the “genius loci” as described by Christian Norberg Schulz, the characterization of the gathering places, the piazze, and their role depicted by Camillo Sitte can be of great help in this attempt of understanding[13]; for both, the systematization made by Christopher Alexander[14].
The expectations belong to two different levels: one related to the urban structure, the other related to the intermediate space. The general needs or desires pertain to the first one; at this level the demand concerns the availability of places where to perform the required activities. The exigencies that pertain to the second one are induced by the exercise of such activities; the demand in this case concerns the performances that the specific space, devoted to that activity, must offer.
In the design process then, “urban quality” is meant as the capability of the environment configuration of meeting, in quantitative and qualitative terms, all the material and immaterial requirements of the users, by giving the required performances. This approach is well known, but its transposition to the specific field, related to the urban level, the rehabilitation design and the pedestrian mobility, is quite new.
The Requirement Classes
The codification of the most important requirement classes,that model the performance demand that the specific spaces must offer, has been made basing on a study at theoretical level, reviewed, deepened or widened, thanks also to some field research.
The requirements assume various weights in promoting walking as an alternative transport mode; the ones that have been investigated more in depth by the research group are: Accessibility, Safety, Comfort and Attractiveness. They have been studied one by one, to be afterwards interrelated to check possible interface, interference or conflict, and then ranked depending on the priority that people give to them.
The investigations to check their definitions have been run in some case-studies, located in towns and cities of various type, using various methodologies to highlight both the experts’ and the users’ point of view, and to point out the common problems or worth, and the discrepancies.