Culture&Territories#3

Neighbourhood & City
walking and view patterns by time of day and day of week as by season and local
geography/route location. To our best knowledge, the PAMUS process of the
Algarve region is characterized by unique features at the country level that are worth
to be shared with a larger scientific community. The structure of the remainder
of this chapter is organized as follows. Section two presents the challenge for
sustainable urban mobility planning as a common goal in European cities. Section
three presents the living lab in the polycentric region of Algarve that supported
the development of the Action Plans for Sustainable Urban Mobility. Section four
introduces the App VAMUS that was developed as part of the planning process and
discusses its expected impacts, focusing on those that can lead to enhance public
place and quality of life objectives. Finally, section 5 concludes.
BACKGROUND ON SUSTAINABLE URBAN MOBILITY PLANS
Although the European Commission is promoting the concept of SUMPS for already
several years through several policy initiatives (EC, 2005; EC, 2009; EC, 2011) it was
after the publication of the guidelines for development and implementation of SUMPS
(EC, 2013a) that a step-change for a new planning paradigm started to grow
in European cities. Through the CIVITAS initiative launched by the European
Commission in 2002 advances towards integrated planning and sustainable mobility
were made by living lab projects in more than 80 cities where over 800 measures and
transport solutions were tested and implemented. Measures have been grouped in
ten thematic areas: car-independent lifestyles, clean fuels & vehicles, collective
passenger transport, demand management strategies, integrated planning (SUMPS),
mobility management, public involvement, safety & security, transport telematics and
urban freight logistics. The five phases of the CIVITAS initiative can be summarized
as follows (CIVITAS, 2018): a) CIVITAS I (2002-2006): 19 cities; four living lab
projects; b) CIVITAS II (2005-2009): 17 cities, four living lab projects; c) CIVITAS
PLUS (2008-2012): 25 cities, five living lab projects; d) CIVITAS PLUS II (2012-2016):
8 cities, two living lab projects; e) CIVITAS 2020 (2016-2020): 17 cities, 3 living lab
projects.
The mentioned EC guidelines on SUMPS present the general definition of a sustainable
urban mobility plan as a “strategic plan designed to satisfy the mobility needs of
people and businesses in cities and their surroundings for a better quality of life.
It builds on existing planning practices and takes due consideration of integration,
participation and evaluation principles” (EC,2013a). This strategic plan is user-
-centric as it has a clear focus on the mobility needs of people and the requirements
of businesses to move goods and supply services and stresses the importance of the
collaboration of citizens and stakeholders and the integration of policies. This
represents a disruption from the “old” planning approach centered on the “predict
and provide paradigm” previously based on the application of traffic prediction
models and the provision of road infrastructures by means of a sectorial approach.
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