New technologies and behaviors are laying the foundations for a new mobility, which is intertwined with the town planning sustainable and is necessary to meet the challenges of pollution and climate change. But to change the way we move we need a new way of planning.
Three strategies to reduce CO2 emissions in the transport sector provide the guidelines to achieve the reduction targets at EU level: Improve , which aims to improve performance, including environmental, vehicles and fuels; Shift , which tends to transfer the demand for transport to consumers means less energy from fossil fuels; Finally, Avoid , which aims to prevent mobility. The beautiful book, edited by Anna Donati and Francesco Petracchini, Getting around (published by Environment 2015) gives an interesting insight into the mix of the three strategies that affects today’s transportation system deeply changing the logic of use and organization.
Towards a new mobility
All the many technological, organizational and behavioral configures what the way things are going under the name of “new mobility” . Not only technological innovation in the engines, the promising prospects of electrification and automation vehicles , reducing consumption have made great strides improving the performance of private vehicles and even those of public transport.
But the massive doses of telecommunication and computer technology in the management and use of fleets and private vehicles have open outlook until recently long ago unthinkable to the translation car from consumer durable in service and to new strategies for integration between different modes of transport.
In the co-modality, pointing enlargement the possible choices by users of information, the car tends to become a service to be used only when needed, with public benefits in terms of use of urban space and reduce pollution as well as individual advantages in terms reduction of investment for self and liberation from the many tasks connected with the possession of the car itself.
It is hard to think that one of the most interesting aspects of the “news” is just the availability behavioral change and the factor that differentiates “new mobility” to “sustainable mobility” is an indication not only of the many technological factors converged through which sustainability can (should?) become common practice.
Fewer employees from private car
Among these many factors converging, the component “save traffic” (Avoid) – certainly marginal in the traditional analysis of the transport system – unprecedented importance under the influence of multiple factors, many of which stem from problems and subject areas outside the scope of transport.
Up to the recent past (and largely still) the most prevalent forms of urban sprawl and the lack of regulation of rent have been a powerful incentive to ‘ mandatory use and systematic private car .
It is very obvious the heavy ballast mail to change the arrangement of settlements, the ways of living and of work based on the use of the car, gradually become prosthesis to individual Faced with all the burdens of daily life. But at the same time it must be recognized that new ways of living, to work, to relate to the right around the social and economic tend to less dependent on the car , to regain short distances, with an organization of public space less subservient to the presence of the car, and profound changes in the logic of possession, circulation and parking of cars.
“Save” motorized mobility does not propose to pursue an unlikely self exclusion from the system, but radically improve the environmental performance of “adapting” wisely uses in combination with other modes of transport and, together, to pursue policies of reorganization of urban spaces designed to achieve multiple benefits in terms of the welfare of the inhabitants, including the to make less to possession and use systematic car .
Resilient City
At this meeting the urban regeneration policies that are developing across Europe. Are policies that have profound effects on ways to move but do not come within the strategies of government traffic, even those virtuously oriented to achieve environmental improvements. Rather arise from the global phenomenon of concentration of population in the city and mode of growth of urban agglomerations such as to endanger the functioning of ecosystem services.
They resulted from the recognition that the right Urban areas are the locus of maximum generation of GHG emissions and therefore the place where they appear most promising measures mitigation and adaptation . And finally born by the new social cohesion problems related to migration, multiculturalism and growing inequalities. Problems that are, in their urban practices of use of space, new forms of expression and attempts unpublished solution.
A particularly interesting part of these urban regeneration policies, including for the new mobility, consists from green infrastructure , or by the formation of the continuous network of open spaces permeable, urban parks and gardens (public and private), with trees so as to create a real new infrastructure Urban.
The Green Infrastructure assumes all the characters of continuity and structuring its basic infrastructure but, unlike the gray infrastructure (roads, collection networks, underground utilities, etc.), takes place in the same space a variety of important functions for the sustainability of the urban organism. The urban scale and the scale of the neighborhood green infrastructure helps regulate the microclimate, mitigate the heat island, to absorb CO2, to feed the aquifers, to purify water, to give continuity to the regional ecological networks, in manage surface runoff and flood risks during the heavy rains that climate change now makes frequent.
Roles for green infrastructure
The good quality green infrastructure, along with traffic calming measures, are a powerful incentive to non-motorized mobility . The continuity and the deep penetration of green network with the residences and urban activities makes it easy and pleasant to walk, take the half-hour daily walk briskly that OrganizzazioneMondiale Holiness believes it is essential for the prevenione of heart disease and obesity .
Even as these new attitudes are born the extraordinary development of measures for the use of the Bike (the long cycle routes and short distance to bike sharing), forms of access to school on foot or by bicycle, forms of collective purchase, the flowering of new proximity services or new forms of marketing km0. Of course it is still a minority phenomenon, but there is no doubt that constitute interesting innovations from the point of view of the “new mobility”, including reducing the need for motorized mobility.
The push from Europe
In our country these urban policies are still made entirely episodic, mostly entrusted to the sensitivity and the good feelings councilor on duty. But they look set to find powerful allies in the European directives for combating climate change, for the conservation of biodiversity and for the new goals of urban resilience and extremes make now unavoidable.
The second round of reduction in CO2 emissions for the transport sector is going to be much more challenging than the first and also to the objectives in 2020. By then, the non-ETS sectors (Emission Trading System, transport, ‘housing, services, agriculture, waste treatment, etc.) will have to reduce their emissions in Europe by 30% compared to 2005. The contribution requested Italy to achieve this objective is a r eduction emissions by 13% .
Set a threshold for such emissions poses the problem of establishing concrete goals and ways of measuring CO2 reductions for sectors such as transport, currently not included in the ETS. Problem that will become even more important in the near future, in fact 23 October 2014 the European Council established an agreement for a further “package” of targets to be achieved by 2030 that includes:
• emission reductions emissions by 40% compared to 1990 as a must for achieving by 2050 a reduction of at least 80%;
• cover at least 27% of energy consumption from renewable energy;
• An increase energy efficiency by at least 27%;
• the strengthening and reform of the EU ETS emissions trading.
On the way to the desired low-carbon economy, reducing demand in 2050 the transport sector is between 54% and 67%: far more courageous changes are indispensable to that required to achieve the targets for 2020.
The importance of a new style of planning
We are therefore in the midst of a new regulatory environment, economic and social places, for our country, urgent need to change . The experience of European countries who have gone successfully along the roadmap towards a low carbon economy show the need and the importance of a new style of planning, led by the administration public.
A planning objective-based awareness, cooperation between different levels of government and the various interests involved, but also on the active participation of end users, the willingness to experiment and propose mutual trust between government and citizens. It is not exactly the case of urban planning in Italy, where the public administration gets credit for having abandoned any ambition to drive urban transformation and the urbanization of new areas by municipalities respond to the needs of cash rather than in some need of the community.
The setting of quantitative targets is an important opportunity to take up new attitudes with the issue of planning and really proceed towards better sustainability of the transport system in framework of urban regeneration that must lead by 2050 the cancellation of land use and restoration of the generalized ecosystem services.
Some of these attitudes of connection between transport planning, urban regeneration and participation active residents are already effectively reflected in the proposals concerning the Community SUMP (Sustainable urban mobility plans). As shown Community Plan for sustainable, strategic nature, it must focus on the objectives of quality of life rather than on those of transport; aims to build with residents and local interests.
The invitation is to From ambitious goals , able to collect sharing, enthusiasm, participation in their implementation. SUMP are also plans of mobility and even here the responsibility for their implementation is in the hands of the administration of transport. But their implementation involves constantly throughout the administration and civil society. The systematic monitoring and effective action must give concrete demonstration of the achievements and benefits related.
An effective means of connection between transport plans based on conscious objectives and plans of urban redevelopment is already included in the toolbox of programming. This is the Strategic Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programs (SEA): an extremely undervalued today in our country and applied almost entirely ineffective. In sharp contrast with European strategies for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, considering the SEA one of the tools of the highest potential (see: Living well within the limits of our planet – 7th general program of action of the Union Environment until 2020).
The SEA is not only the right instrument to take account of differences, but it is the construction site owned of the decisions, the search for synergies and consistency, the sedimentation of experiences and flexible re-orientation of the actions according to changes, often rapid, the economic and social context. In the transport sector Avoid, Shift and Improve will have to contribute to harmonious and balanced proportions to achieve the objectives.
And the results will be much better as the resources made available from the auctions of emission allowances will be distributed according to demand and to the aspirations of the citizens rather than the strength of the business and financial interests involved. The tools for the “new mobility” are, in our country, all potentially present and is clearly noticeable the openness to change of the citizens. Now it is up to politics and its ability to usher really a style of administration finally adapted to the times.
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