Post-car city
But what is a post-car city, or what should it be? ‘A model of urban mobility less dependent on the use of the private car and capable of harnessing technological innovations to promote public transport and active mobility and make cities more accessible and sustainable’, the report answers. It was edited by Pierluigi Coppola and Paola Pucci of the Politecnico di Milano, and by Giuseppe Pirlo of the Università degli studi di Bari Aldo Moro.
A change on all fronts, which would have at least three highly significant positive effects: reduced pollution, improved road safety and greater inclusiveness.
This is clearly a ‘change of pace’ (the expression is apt) in cultural terms too. Designing a ‘post-car’ city implies a profound change in citizens’ travel and mobility habits, as the report acknowledges: and therefore a change, in some respects even a radical one, in a lifestyle consolidated over decades, as well as in the economic system based on the use of the private car.
We should therefore not be surprised by resistance, which must instead be expected and taken seriously. One answer that urban planners have long suggested for overcoming it is the creation of experimental areas. Milan, for example, has done this by establishing the ‘open squares’, that is, spaces previously used for car parking that are transformed into places for play and socialising.
The 15-minute city
Another key concept is that of the ‘15-minute city’. Made famous, so to speak, by the election campaign of the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, it is the model of a city in which most of residents’ daily activities can be met by walking or cycling directly from their homes and their own ‘5-minute neighbourhoods’.
The report dwells precisely on the need for urban and infrastructure planning measures to guarantee access to services without using a car, as well as on the opportunity to encourage intermodal exchanges, so as to offer citizens a connection to centres outside the cities too.
In this regard, the reflection offered by the president of Urban@it, Nicola Martinelli, is interesting: he highlights how the so-called ‘proximity city’ is, for Italian urban society, in many cases already a reality. ‘
There are many neighbourhoods in our cities that have a very strong identity and very important relationships’, Martinelli stresses. Moreover, ‘the pandemic has once again favoured local shops, which had been heavily affected by large-scale retail’.
It is therefore a matter of moving towards the polycentric city – as the report indicates – then going down to the neighbourhoods and working on public space and on the nodes that intercept transport.
Central to this perspective is the role of service spaces in the urban planning sense: for example, university campuses.
The focus is also on technological progress, which is manifold and extremely fast. Autonomous driving, for example, is indicated as potentially of great help in this process. Not to mention the gradual digitalisation of services in the field of public transport.
On this very point, however, the report raises an alert: poor connection coverage in many parts of our country and the lack of digital skills from which a good part of the Italian population suffers may exclude entire groups that are already vulnerable, increasing inequalities.
Pums
On the governance tools for achieving the transition to the post-car city, the report dwells on the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (Pums), introduced by the European Commission with the 2013 Urban Mobility Package. This, it stresses, is the crucial venue for creating the new models of city. Everything, however, must be conceived and carried out with close attention to local needs, and by strengthening the principle of inter-institutional collaboration.
It is indeed, as the authors of the report acknowledge, ‘a framework of great complexity, within which only the ability to act in concert among institutions, local partners, universities and research can lead to the success of the operation, and in which the possibility of acting through forms of project and interaction between partners that are innovative, inclusive and at the same time effective will be decisive.
