With mobility from a gender perspective and climate action in mind, and on the occasion of World Bicycle Day on June 3, Metropolis – the global network of major cities and metropolitan areas – is organising an online meeting with mobility experts to address mobility management and planning at the metropolitan level.
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In the current pandemic it seems that mobility is synonymous with contagion, especially in densely crowded urban spaces. Walking or cycling re-emerge as the healthiest, most sustainable andequitable mobility options that, in addition, favor the so-called “social distancing”. Now, in the vast metropolitan areas around the world, with movements between neighborhoods and to peripheral municipalities, the reality is that the networks of public transport, cycling and pedestrian systems reveal shortages in comparison to daily educational, work and mobility of care requirements, according to the latest report from the World Association of the Major Metropolises (Metropolis): “Rights and claims for metropolitan mobility”.
At least on Bicycle Day we have to ask ourselves: For whom does the infrastructure work?
From Dakar or Lisboa, passing Berlin or Delhi, to São Paulo or Montreal, we find diverse metropolitan transport systems that have been designed principally to cover work mobility, without considering that direct trips for work reasons do not represent the movements of the majority of the people.
Women are the population group with the highest mobility rate
To give just one example, the so-called mobility of care – which covers travel related to household management and maintenance such as errands and daily shopping, as well as all travel undertaken to care for dependent persons – represents the highest percentage of trips and is mostly done by women. On average, mobility of care represents nearly 40% of trips in large metropolises, compared to 20% work-related mobility (the rest is distributed between travel for study, leisure and personal affairs), according to the aforementioned report. Moreover, 29-to-49-year-old women are the population group with the highest mobility rate, for reasons related to caring for children and dependents. Walking or cycling can therefore only address internal accessibility to the municipality or neighbourhood. However, access from the peripheries to the vital activities located in metropolitan centres would very likely require mechanised transportation.
Public transport has been restricted due to the pandemic
What is more, the situation is compounded in the context of a pandemic like COVID-19, since most of the essential work in cities – in hospitals, care homes, cleaning and food services – is done by women. Public transport has also been restricted due to the pandemic, impacting the subsistence of women informal workers who live on the outskirts of cities and for whom accessible and safe public transit is their livelihood.
More bicycles less gas emissions
“At the level of the metropolitan area and its far-flung municipalities, therefore, it is crucial to rely on public transport networks with affordable, accessible and nonpolluting mechanised mobility services”, asserts Floridea Di Ciommoa, an economist and urban analyst with expertise in equity and transport, inclusive technology and sustainable logistics. And, we emphasize the sustainable aspect since, statistics show that at the global level, transport is responsible for 23% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Sustainable Development Goals
With mobility from a gender perspective and climate action in mind, and on the occasion of World Bicycle Day on June 3, Metropolis, with the support of the International Organisation for Public Transport (UITP) and the City Council of Barcelona, is organising an online meeting with mobility experts to address mobility management and planning at the metropolitan level, advocating for sustainable, affordable and inclusive mobility that leaves no one behind, especially in these times of crisis, and that contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of vital importance to the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
More bicycles more quality of life for citizens
There is an urgent need to make major cities and metropolises find new ways to manage complexity, increase efficiency, reduce expenses and improve quality of life. This is where metropolitan governance comes into play: establishing a modern, metropolitan, multilevel and intersectoral governance that responds to the plurality of visions and needs, such as a gender perspective, in the process of project design and development, constitutes the most powerful framework to conceive more sustainable, safe and inclusive metropolises that offer a better quality of life for citizens.
The webinar “Commuting across metropolises” is open to anyone and completely free. It will take place on June 3, 2020, from 11:00 to 12:00 (CET), and will be held in English.
Click here for more information and for participating.
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World Cycling Day is celebrated on June 3: It was adopted on April 12, 2018 as an official UN day of awareness of the social benefits of bicycle use.
After the announcement was made, General Secretary Bernhard Ensink of the European Cyclists’ Federation announced that cycling has social, economic and environmental benefits and brings people closer together. He went on to say that the UN Declaration was a recognition of the contribution of cycling to the 17 UN goals for sustainable development. (Source: wikipedia.org)
International incentives for cycling
bike to work is an annual participatory campaign in Switzerland to promote cycling and health in companies. The campaign takes place in May and June and aims to encourage commuters to use their bikes more often on their way to work. To motivate all participants who cycle more than 50% of their way to work, prizes worth over CHF 100,000 are raffled off. bike to work is a campaign run by Pro Velo Schweiz. (Source: wikipedia.org)
More safety for cyclists
Cities must create plans for a safer situation on the streets. The number of people who have died in a bicycle accident is still far too high. The Ride of Silence was launched to draw attention to this fact and also to commemorate the road deaths. It is an annual cycling event that takes place in the manner of Critical Mass, but the cyclists ride in silence.
The participants are mostly dressed in white. The parade goes to places of misfortune marked with white painted bicycles (ghost bikes) and holds a minute’s silence there.
The first Ride of Silence was held in 2003 in Dallas, Texas. Since then, the Ride of Silence has been held every year on the third Wednesday in May. In 2015 Rides of Silence took place in 340 cities in 20 countries worldwide. (Source: wikipedia.org)
What do Manila and Rotterdam have in common? Nothing, where human-friendly mobility is concerned: In Manila, bicycle-riding is a dangerous endeavor, whereas in the Dutch city, cycling is a joy. So how do we create bikeable and walkable cities – in a word of active mobility – all over the world? The secret could lie in the realization that no mobility challenge is solely one of mobility: It’s also about public space, social programs, climate change, employment, and housing. And getting rid of silo mentality. A plea.
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In a recent work visit to Manila in the Philippines, we had a morning meeting scheduled. “The taxi will pick you up from the hotel one hour beforehand.” A full hour of driving? We expected a location outside the city, hoping to catch beautiful views from the car. When checking the destination, we were surprised to discover it took place in a nearby district, a mere seven kilometres away. “That’s ridiculous!” we thought. “Why sit in a car for an hour when we can cycle to the location much faster?” Back home in Rotterdam, a seven-kilometre trip is a no-brainer; thirty minutes of relaxed cycling does the trick. This was one reason we went with the Dutch Cycling Embassy to Manila – to export the great quality of life that a cycling city can create.
Sadly, charting the route in Manila demonstrated that taking a bicycle would be a dangerous expedition; there’s hardly any bicycle infrastructure in Manila, and cycling on urban highways is a suicide mission. Walking and public transit were also not options: Both would take one-and-a-half hours. We were stuck with the car.
Sitting in the slow-moving taxi in Manila, we saw no beautiful views of Luzon island – instead we saw a dystopia, traffic at a stand-still. Towers and giant malls have been built, but the public space is dull and uninviting. Roads, bridges, and highways have been constructed everywhere, yet it’s clear they fill quickly. The taxi driver told us that in recent years, driving in Manila has gotten much worse since so many people can afford to buy cars.
This is indeed an urban dystopia. Economically, people are improving, yet they can’t buy their way out of the crisis. Just like us that morning, they lack a sustainable choice for moving around. The rich and middle class will buy more cars and every year, suffer worse traffic. The poor will walk or cycle alongside this disaster. A lose-lose situation.
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Mobility is not only A to B, but creating C, D, and E
Work on urban mobility is, generally speaking, divided into two lines. The first is, “How do you get there?” It mainly concerns the planning and building of infrastructure (sidewalks, roads, bike lanes), and the vehicles that use them (cars, buses, bikes, e-scooters, and of course, our legs), allowing people to travel from A to B. To this end, we have seen progress. More and more cities understand that car infrastructure takes up too much space. Around the world, cities are introducing bicycle infrastructure, expanding sidewalks, and removing cars from city centers. But this is not enough, as it’s only one part of the urban mobility challenge. We already know that building more roads, updating bus lanes, improving traffic lights, or introducing e-scooters to the city won’t solve urban mobility issues. A city must work, in tandem, on the other challenge of mobility: “How do you group all destinations close together?” Streets, neighborhoods, and cities should allow the achievement of a lot without traveling far. When streets are places to play, meet, shop, and work, driving is not needed. In essence, this is dense, mixed-use urbanism that combines residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, and entertainment use on small urban scales.
As many an inspirational Instagram page quote tells you, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” In urban mobility, this is truly the case. Transit via sustainable and active mobility is achieved only when destinations are closer. That’s why cities like Amsterdam, Paris, and Tel Aviv have such a high share of walking and cycling compared to the majority of their counterparts in North America. The former allow people to achieve a lot simply by walking around the corner, making it useless to take the car out of the garage.
The complexity of planning such places is left to the “how to get there” professionals. We are fascinated by new mobility schemes, hoping they will save us from ourselves. We focus on the easier question because the “how to get all the destinations together” question is just too complex. But great urban mobility is only the result of both efforts. Let’s focus on the journey, rather than the goal. Densify neighborhoods, introduce new uses, and work with local residents and businesses to create better public space. True, it’s much more complicated work, but that’s the only way we can save existing car-oriented cities.
The silo mentality is a car mentality
In 1913, Henry Ford and his then-young motor company introduced the assembly line. The idea is simple yet genius when it comes to efficiency and production: Instead of having one employee responsible for building the entire car, why not let each worker specialize in a specific task? In this way, making a car (or phone, laptop, or desk) is a rather simple process of progressively assembling the product. Unfortunately, it seems that city-making has also become an assembly line. Municipalities are divided into departments each responsible solely for one element of a city: infrastructure, housing, commerce, mobility, social issues, education, etc. These all work in silos, rarely sitting together (unless, of course, there is a dispute over responsibility). How can we expect organizing along these lines to create a mixed-use, dense, lively city?
A mixed-use, dense city is anything but siloed: It’s different people from all walks of life living together. It’s many individuals, in all their complexity, moving within a small footprint and creating harmony. It’s a “complex order,” as Jane Jacobs described great streets:
“This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance¬ – not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole.”
– Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
The silo mentality from which our municipalities suffer reinforces further siloing. And silo cities are best for cars. Automobiles succeed where separation exists: houses on one side of town, offices on another. Pedestrians on sidewalks, cars on the road. Any potential surprise must be removed so that separation is absolute. We cannot undo this paradigm using these organizational strategies. As Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
This is probably the biggest challenge in today’s city-making, and it requires true leadership and mental strength. Dismantling silos will mean that all of us must have less ego and decision power, but we’ll all benefit in the long run. During our own work, we see how difficult this is, but also how rewarding to get specialists from all around a city to work together.
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We recently contributed to the bicycle vision for Rotterdam. The project dealt, of course, with bicycle infrastructure and promotion, but beyond that, the vision was about promoting quality of life in the city. We acknowledged that the city had to invest more in infrastructure at the same time that different domains needed to become part of the narrative. The bicycle, as it touches so many aspects of life – mobility, health, public space, and sustainability – can bring all these domains together. All departments in the city should work to promote cycling and take advantage of a place that is built for active, sustainable mobility. The creation of local mobility hubs was proposed, to be built in neighborhoods and act as a new type of neighborhood center. The hubs will be places to meet neighbors, try new mobility options, park bicycles, learn about the neighborhood, develop professional and business skills concerning the bicycle, and much more. Imagine how many municipal departments, organizations, residents, and businesses could be affected by such a hub.
So the best way to create urban change and promote active mobility is to break up silos. No mobility challenge is solely a mobility issue: It also involves public space, social programs, climate change, employment, and much more. We must create a shared vision within cities and bring together departments to work on these visions. No more assembly-line cities.
When architects, landscape architects and lighting designers truly work together, magical things happen. One example is a bicycle path in Singapore that reacts to its users.
Singapore is one of the major cities when it comes to technology and efficiency. But just as in any other metropolis the transport systems are very complex, they can barely cope with millions of inhabitants. The solution? Bicycles!
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A while ago, the Urban Redevelopment Authority in Singapore announced an international competition: A master plan for 24 kilometres of bicycle highways. This “Rail Corridor” will lead through the city, north to south, and connect residential areas, workplaces, schools and public spaces.
Nipek, a lighting design office based in Singapore, MVRDV and Architects 61 proposed to connect nature and city. They designed a dynamic lighting concept that fits the needs of bikers while respecting nature.
Artificial light is a serious problem, especially for wildlife, because it changes the organism’s biorhythm. In fact, light pollution is one of the main issues of the modern world. Nonetheless, people do need light for orientation and safety reasons – a bicycle highway can not work without it.
The concept uses a smart lighting technology that only illuminates the lane when it senses activity. The lights then successively illuminate as bikers travel down the path. Otherwise, only phosphorescent reflectors on the Rail Corridor give a hint of where the trail leads.
Special lamp posts make this solution possible. They are able to communicate with each other and switch on when a biker reaches their activation radius.
Even though the proposal didn’t succeed, the project demonstrates, what better teamwork can do for public spaces. There is much more to a nature-friendly concept than just the right choice of plants.
Read more about glowing bicycle lanes here.
