ABSTRACT

Despite their growing application and worldwide diffusion, the transformative potential of experiments aimed at achieving “streets for people” rather than “streets for traffic” remains largely under researched. There is little to no comparative assessment of already existing experiments, and no critical reflection on their specific added value for systemic change. Building from a literature review and discussion, this paper aims to fill this gap by addressing the following questions: Which types of city street experiments have been undertaken in the pursuit of the vision of “streets for people” instead of “streets for traffic”? What are their backgrounds, main characteristics, and reported impacts? And perhaps most importantly: How can these city street experiments trigger systemic change in urban mobility? These elements are detailed per experiment type, in order of ascending functional complexity: the re-marking of streets, the re-purposing of car parking, the re-purposing of sections of streets, and the re-purposing of entire streets. Illustrative examples from practice include intersection repairs, parklets, the pavement to plazas programme, play streets, ciclovias and open streets. The reviewed literature documents positive impacts on physical activity, active transportation, safety and social interaction and capital, and more mixed impacts on business activity. While street experiments aim to create fundamentally different arrangements of urban mobility, their potential as triggers of a greater systemic change is unclear. This paper uses the defining characteristics of “transition experiments” – a concept derived from the field of transition studies – to develop and illustrate a framework to assess this transformative potential. In the conclusions, the review and assessment framework are used to sketch a research and policy agenda for this increasingly topical phenomenon.

摘要

尽管它们的应用日益广泛并且在世界范围内广泛传播，但旨在实现“以人为本”而不是“以人为本”的实验的变革潜力仍在很大程度上研究中。几乎没有对现有实验的比较评估，也没有对其系统变化的特定增加值的批判性思考。本文基于文献综述和讨论，旨在通过解决以下问题来填补这一空白：为追求“以人为本”而不是“以人为本的街道”，已经进行了哪些类型的城市街道实验？它们的背景，主要特征和所报告的影响是什么？也许最重要的是：这些城市街道实验如何触发城市交通的系统性变化？对于每种实验类型，这些元素都会按功能复杂性的提高顺序进行详细说明：重新标记街道，重新设定停车场用途，重新设定部分街道用途以及重新设定整个街道用途。实践中的说明性例子包括交叉路口维修，小公园，人行道至广场计划，游玩街道，环岛和开阔街道。审阅的文献记录了对体育活动，积极交通，安全和社会互动以及资本的积极影响，以及对商业活动的更多混杂影响。尽管街头实验旨在创建根本不同的城市交通方式，但其引发更大的系统性变化的潜力尚不清楚。本文利用“过渡实验”的定义特征（一种来自过渡研究领域的概念）来开发和说明评估这种转化潜力的框架。在结论中，审查和评估框架用于为这一日益流行的现象草拟研究和政策议程。