Pedestrianisation processes and public life. The case of Torino Mobility Lab

With the constant growth of urban agglomerations around the world and with the expectations that urban population will constitute around 70% of the total population until 2050, more attention should be dedicated to the living conditions in cities in order to prevent phenomena, which have already started to arise such as the high levels of air and noise pollution, which can cause a series of diseases, the presence of a strong traffic, the high number of road accidents. All these events are directly linked to the concept of motorisation. The motorisation is a phenomenon usually associated with the process of growth of cities, but actually it is quite a recent one and it is mainly rooted in the modernists’ ideologies about the urban planning, strongly linked to the functional segregation, and in the process of mass-production of cars. The livability and the walkability of cities are concepts that should be more systematically investigated and applied in order to adapt our cities to the future challenges. The pedestrianisation is a process that could allow us to achieve them and to create healthier urban environment to live within, able to enhance also the social dimension of urban life. The present thesis is a study of the different types of pedestrianisation and the effects that it has on the society, economy and environment. It was given attention also to the so-called Tactical Urbanism, which gives the possibility to experiment with low-cost, short-term interventions, able to create long-term changes. Since pedestrianisation is a complex process, directly linked to the public, it has been studied the participatory approach as a way to collaborate with the citizens that may be affected by the possible changes of the urban conformation and to create spaces able to satisfy the specific needs of the social context. All these concepts were overviewed through three case studies of high importance, situated in three different cities around the world – Vienna, Barcelona and New York. A research was made on the methodologies, used for studying public life, developed by the architect and urbanist Jan Gehl, which results are usually applied to critically understand if an intervention is successful and the degree of its’ success. All the knowledge gained from the theory research was applied on the project Torino Mobility Lab, which covers the neighborhood of San Salvario in Turin and was launched in 2020, concentrating the study mainly on four temporary, experimental pedestrianized areas, implemented in the neighborhood. After a careful demographic and territorial analysis of the neighborhood and of the micro-zones in close proximity to the study areas, a complex study of the public life, following the methodology of Jan Gehl, and of the public opinion, performing a series of formal interviews with the local actors, was made. Keeping in mind the potential that these areas showed to have, using the participation as a base point and the Tactical Urbanism as an opportunity to experiment, design for two of the areas was proposed. A different approach was used to the areas - of a traditional pedestrian street and of a shared street, each of them based on the information obtained during the study.