1. Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from
Urban Mobility: Changing Travel Behaviour
Through an Informed Design Process
Context: Exploring the rela=onship between travel behaviour and neighbourhood design
Design workshops to observe prac==oners in ac=on
A hypothe=cal design project
Mobility within the design process Mobility objec=ves and solu=ons
Using the prac;ces and insights of urban design professionals to expand on the exis;ng research, we explore the
reciprocal rela;onship between the built environment and travel behaviour at the neighbourhood level.
However, there is an important gap between research and prac;ce.
CapaCity, a French research project, inves;gated the
knowledge of urban professionals and the use of scien;fic
research in their design prac;ces through a series of
workshops. CapaCity’s aim is to strengthen knowledge-transfer
between research and prac;ce. These workshops also
generated insights into:
i) How urban professionals consider and solve mobility
within a design process
ii) How the scien=fic evidence relates to their knowledge and
prac=ces
How can the design of a neighbourhood encourage modes of sustainable mobility?
?
Open the site to its surrounding context, and invite
non-inhabitants to cross the site to get to transit stops
§ Establish visual and physical connec;ons
§ Create a proper and invi;ng urban façade
§ Improve the public image of the neighbourhood
Priori=ze pedestrians and cyclists
Reduce distances
§ An intricate network allowing different routes
§ Publicly accessible paths between buildings
§ Avoid big, closed-off building lots
§ Avoid con;nuous building facades for easy site access
Enhance the feeling of safety
§ Create invi;ng streets and public places
§ Place community gardens and dwellings along streets with
car-traffic in order to calm speed
§ Collec;ve parking at the site’s entrances to reduce
internal driving
According to the literature, internal and external constraints are elements that structure a design process and
provide a design framework. In addi;on, the designer’s skills – their savoir-faire – play an important role in the
direc;on a project takes, and the final decisions they make.
Internal Constraints
§ Imposed, primarily from the client’s demands
and objec;ves.
§ I.e. restricted number of parking places
(0,5 per dwelling for 400 dwellings)
External Constraints
§ The project’s context (physical, social, cultural, etc.)
§ Established through specific design choices
§ I.e. prioriAzing pedestrians, reducing car use
(established by the designers)
The Designers’ Savoir-Faire
§ The sum of previous experiences, acquired knowledge, values, beliefs, and design principles
§ The designers’ primary source of knowledge and poten;al solu;ons, their ”intellectual luggage”
(Lawson, 2006)
§ I.e. encouraging people to cross the site in order to increase metro use by enhancing the percieved safety;
enhancing internal circulaAon to strengthen social cohesion
Conclusion: Urban design professionals hold valuable insight and knowledge to be further explored
§ Further exploring designers’ savoir-faire might enhance our understanding of
people’s mobility behaviour at the neighbourhood level, thus strengthening
the effect of measures and solu;ons. Surveys and interviews are on-going.
§ The findings underline the importance of a dialogue between prac;ce and
research in order to facilitate a two-way knowledge transfer. BeYer insights
into design prac;ces will also be a step towards this.
§ The designers recognized interdependencies between elements,
and constantly considered how mobility solu;ons might affect the
overall project.
§ Several design solu;ons corresponded to the literature, but were
rarely iden;fied as such.
§ Mobility was seen as an independent objec;ve and as a means to
enhance liveability in a holis;c approach to the design problem.
Mobility was both an internal
and an external constraint
Mobility provided ini=al structure to
the site and guided the process.
§ The designers seemingly knew how to use both physical and qualita;ve
measures to encourage par;cular modes of mobility (i.e. walking)
§ They u;lized their exis;ng knowledge and land use strategies to affect
mobility on a neighbourhood scale.
§ This indicates that the reciprocal rela;onship between land use and travel
behaviour at the neighbourhood level can be a strategy for changing
mobility behaviours
References
MAJA KAROLINE RYNNING 1. DARKE, J., (1979). The primary generator and the design process. Design Studies, 1: p. 36-44.
2. LAWSON, B. (2006). How designers think: the design process de@mysAfied, 4th ed., Architectural Press, Amsterdam.
3. KIRKEBY, I. M., (2012). Om at skape arkitekfaglig viten. Nordic Journal of Architecture Research, 24: p. 70-90.
4. ELIASSON, I., (2000). The use of climate knowledge in urban planning. Landscape and Urban Planning, 48: p. 31-44.
Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, France
Two cohorts of Architects, Urban Designers and Planners, all without explicit
mobility exper;se, par;cipated in workshops focusing on climate adapta;on.
Observa=on of methods,
approaches, use of knowledge
Addi=onal analysis focusing on
mobility and design prac=ces
Qualita=ve analysis of
recordings and findings
On-going urban renewal in Toulouse provided a case study that allowed CapaCity to
observe design prac;ces and the applica;on of scien;fic knowledge in a design process.
Two half-days, 18 par=cipants