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Spatial analysis Public participation

ciclomobilitaurbana 1

Alessandria, city center - map of issues related to the urban cycling mobility

The urban mobility issue is topical mainly due to the worrying level of pollution in our cities, but it is also an opportunity to reflect on urban paths and to rethink the functions of public spaces, creating meeting places to promote the relationships between citizens. Regarding the urban land, in addition to offering an efficient public transport system, it is necessary to implement actions aimed at fostering pedestrians and encourage the use of bicycles as everyday transport mode.
The action of the government operated with decisions "from above" does not allow the involvement of citizens in identifying the objectives to pursue and often leads to contradictory results. In addition, every new initiative requires an experimentation, which must be accompanied by a process of monitoring the effects.
The proposal is to involve the social networks of citizens in verifying the effectiveness of the actions taken, asking them to take an active role. It must be created a public space for social sharing, in which citizens can discuss the different ways of getting around the city, integrating volunteer activity of collaborative data collection aimed at verifying the results of government choices. The desired outcome is the creation of a knowledge framework on urban mobility, which is supplementary to the official ones, built by the users of the urban system.
This work aims to arrange the data collected in public databases (road cadastre, road accidents, pedestrian and cycling paths) and integrate them with data describing urban phenomena collected involving citizens, both as volunteer data collectors, and also as participants in public debates on the topic of urban road safety. The perception of danger perceived by vulnerable users, which is the main factor in choosing to avoid the bicycle as a mode of transport, is then compared with the actual accident rate data, using analysis that fit to the specificities of the situations and places.
The proposed system, consisting of the functions of gathering reports and data representation on the map, serves primarily pedestrians and cyclists, but it can be useful to all citizens, as a info channel on the ongoing dynamics, and as a feedback channel for collect reports on critical situations of actual or even perceived insecurity.
The proposed monitoring methodology and the functionalities described herein have to become tools used by the citizens’ associations that deal with encouraging cycle-pedestrian urban mobility.
By analyzing collected data, you get a overall picture of the critical issues related to the mobility of the vulnerable users, that will surely be of interest to the local administration that has to make government choices, in order to guide the actions to the attainment of a high public benefit.

Try the map visualization features: www.analisiterritorio.org/mobility/mappaAL.html

This theme has been further developed in my dissertation for the Master Degree in Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing, at the University IUAV of Venice, academic year 2011-12, entitled:

" Monitoring and sharing of issues related to the urban cycling mobility"

Supervisor:   prof. Luigi Di Prinzio
Laureando:   Luca Pantano

See the full publication of the dissertation, in Italian (pdf - about 10Mb)

See the presentation of the dissertation, in Italian (pdf - about 4Mb)

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