Playful Urban Reality Labs That Show Us the Future

1 March 2017

The automobile has penetrated our cities to an intolerable extent. It poses serious harm to citizens’ health through air pollution and noise and to the global climate through carbon dioxide emissions; it occupies public space and impedes social life in the streets. Cars continue growing in two ways: in number and in size. Indeed, each generation of the same car model is becoming longer, wider and higher, and car drivers increasingly buy SUVs and vans. Where there is no strict enforcement of parking regulations, cars will be parked on sidewalks, bike lanes, squares and green spaces. Cars have indeed become a cancer in the urban organism.

We see that responsible city leaders have taken their cities on a journey towards a liveable city, liveable streets, complete streets, ecomobile city, car-lite city, car-free neighbourhoods — the list goes on. It’s an act of resistance towards automobile dominance, and it’s a planning paradigm for new developments.

Ecomobility
The term “ecomobility”, coined in 2007, describes the entirety of vehicles and mobility aids other than the private automobile, that facilitate citizens’ mobility in a city. Ecomobility prioritises both the individual choice of transport mode for a specific trip, and transport planning. These include walking, cycling and wheeling, “passenging” (use of public transport), and car-sharing. Ecomobility requires the integration of green transport modes, and “eco” stands for both ecologically and economically preferable mobility.

First, Communicating a Vision
How can the vision of an ecomobile city be communicated? We’ve noticed that even when we’ve had a long conversation about the future of urban mobility and have determined that we share the vision of an ecomobile city, the images that each of us bears in mind differ significantly —consequently, as do the goals we set out to work towards.

In order to imagine a joint vision it is therefore necessary to create images that we can jointly look at. We can draw pictures, look at photos of streets in other cities, or produce virtual images. We can watch films on urban traffic in other cities or make a study tour to see such streets with our own eyes. All visuals will be helpful, but many people will still have difficulties picturing themselves within a different street design or mobility pattern from their own city. While it’s difficult to convince people of the desirability of a higher quality of life through a drastic change, the challenge is that planners and decision makers have the same difficulties imagining a truly ecomobile city and will discard the vision as unrealistic or not viable.

Therefore, why not play, experience and demonstrate an urban mobility future in a real city, with real people, in real time?

(Left) Proposal for Rusholme in Manchester (source); (centre) Rendering of proposed 7th Avenue separated bike lane in Seattle (source); (right): Car-free State Street by Rob Morache (source).

Second, Experience and Behaviour
Most people cannot imagine practising a mobility mode that is different from what they are used to. Ask around and most of your car-driving friends and colleagues will say they cannot imagine living without their car. Car drivers hardly use a bus or tram. They maintain the perception that distances are longer than they actually are when walked or travelled by bicycle. And they are afraid of the weather, the schedules and the fare systems. Of course, many roads are dominated by cars, noisy and polluted, with unpleasant walking and cycling conditions.

It is therefore important to expose automobile-habituated citizens to liveable streets that offer ecomobility choices, so that they can experience an ecomobile lifestyle. So why not offer citizens the experience of an ecomobile neighbourhood for a month?

Third, Experimenting
If cities have embarked on ecomobility or a car-lite future, planners have to consider a variety of options for public transport systems, road and rail infrastructure, operational services, and street designs. The potential, feasibility and acceptance of new options such as bike- and car-sharing, velo-taxis (i.e., bike taxis) or neighbourhood shuttle buses have to be explored. The same applies to innovative, non-motorised or small electric vehicles.

Many planners would appreciate having the opportunity to test-run solutions for a period of time, be it the redesign of street space, the redirection of traffic flow, or the employment of innovative vehicles. Why not make a neighbourhood a month-long testing field for experimentation?

EcoMobility World Festivals
The EcoMobility Festivals have been conceived, and introduced by ICLEI, as a month-long mise-en-scène of future urban mobility, with the motto, “One Neighborhood, One Month, No Cars.” They serve all three purposes: showing the future today, offering citizens the experience of daily ecomobility, and allowing city planners to test certain solutions. They can be regarded as playful “urban reality labs”.

The EcoMobility World Festivals are organised by a city in partnership with ICLEI under the conceptual leadership of the Creative Director from The Urban Idea. The city will locally work with numerous stakeholders and partners. Here are some past examples:

Suwon 2013:
Mayor Tae-young Yeom of Suwon, a vibrant city with a population of 1.3 million 30 kilometres south of Seoul, sat up when he learned about the EcoMobility Festival. He saw an opportunity to both prepare citizens for a future without fossil fuel-powered automobiles, and to improve the quality of life of residents in a deprived neighbourhood.

The city invited several neighbourhoods to apply for the festival and chose Haenggung-dong, part of the historic town centre encircled by the historic Hwaseong Fortress, which had been in decline and was up for urban renewal. The festival area was home to 4,300 residents with 1,500 registered cars.

The Mayor boldly and firmly declared that the neighbourhood would be freed from cars; residents could park their cars in special parking lots prepared by the city outside of the area; and the neighbourhood would turn ecomobile for the full month of September 2013. He asked the residents to cooperate and comply voluntarily.

A 20-month planning and preparatory process began. The festival project turned out to be fairly complex and the city had to learn how to effectively organise itself in a cross-departmental manner. This brought together city officials from eight divisions, and also representatives of civil society organisations that were appointed to serve on the festival team. Experts from abroad were appointed as international advisors and Korean celebrities engaged as festival ambassadors. The city team and partners from ICLEI and The Urban Idea held a series of international planning workshops.

The city embarked on an unprecedented public participation effort. A residents group in support of the festival was formed and grew to involve a third of all residents of the quarter; a cooperative of shop owners declared their support; the city moved their organising team to a festival office in the centre of Haenggung-dong and advised their officials to take their lunch in local restaurants and interact with the locals; the city also rented a centrally located shop and gave it to the residents’ group as their office and logistical base. Trained interviewers visited all households to explain the project and collect data for a detailed survey of mobility patterns and transport needs as well as opinions. Several public assemblies were held for the city to share the plans and for the residents to air any grievances, voice their concerns or express their support.

Understandably, not everyone was happy with the prospect of living without their car for a full month. While many residents looked forward to the festival with curiosity and expectations, others got angry in view of a month without their beloved car. Some residents felt that as they would face inconveniences, the city should compensate them. Reportedly, even families were split into “for and against” factions. While much of the open opposition among the residents and business people turned into acceptance or even support over time, a very aggressive and vocal group of opponents from the business sector put so much pressure on the city that a compromise had to be made: the four-lane Jongjo Street was closed to automobiles and converted into an “ecomobility street” for just 10 days instead of for the entire month.

The concept of the EcoMobility Festivals as a month-long mise-en-scène stipulates that the neighbourhood would undergo a temporary re-decoration of street space and re-organisation of traffic, and be reverted to “normal” after the month. However, political wisdom led the Mayor to have two main streets in the quarter redesigned and reconstructed permanently. Residents would then see that the Mayor was organising the festival not just as a show, but that the city is determined to seriously embark on the revival and upgrade of the area.

In the morning of 1 September 2013, Haenggung-dong was car-free. The empty streets filled up with people who strolled around, cycled, rode small electric vehicles or enjoyed a ride with a velotaxi. Music from street concerts and dancing performances could be heard and street theatre attracted young and old. Food stalls offered traditional Korean food, and restaurants served meals and drinks on tables and chairs that they had placed in the streets. The absence of cars transformed the neighbourhood into a liveable place. It was truly stunning to see people being so relaxed and happy.

Merchandise and supplies got delivered to shops and restaurants by an electric shuttle service from the external parking lot provided by the city. ICLEI’s EcoMobility Congress attracted mayors, urban planners and transport experts from all over the world, and various exhibitions offered information and stimulating experiences related to urban mobility and greener lifestyles. Innovative vehicles could be tried on a test track. The festival programme offered events and activities for young and old during the whole ecomobility month.

On the last day of the festival we saw some residents in tears, wishing that the carfree environment could last forever, while others hurried to bring back their SUVs right at midnight when the barriers around Haenggung-dong were removed.

In the weeks following the festival, the city convened a roundtable event with Haenggungdong residents and second one for the wider citizenship. Asked how they would like to see their neighbourhood permanently changed, the residents asked for a general speed limit of 20 km/h and parking restrictions in the main streets what the city promised to implement. The roundtable with Suwon citizens endorsed “ecomobility” as the paradigm for the city’s future transport planning.

This festival ultimately lent support to the Mayor’s green urban development agenda, which includes, among others, the construction of a tramline, which would be South Korea’s first tram project after the tram in Seoul was abolished in 1968.

Johannesburg 2015: Change the way you move!
For the second festival in October 2015, Johannesburg’s Executive Mayor Parks Tau had selected the Sandton Central Business District as the festival area. Sandton is home to national and Southern African headquarters of banks, insurance companies, multi-nationals as well as hotels, luxury apartments and shopping malls. Sandton experiences an influx of 120,000 commuters and over 75,000 cars every day. Commuters come from all parts of the widespread metropolitan area and travel distances of up to 25 kilometres. Traffic congestion during rush hours annoys not only drivers but also residents of neighbouring districts. Of course, neither the entire CBD nor a significant part of it could have been freed from cars for an entire month. Neither could public transport have temporarily absorbed the number of additional travellers that would be deprived of their cars, nor would the company CEOs have agreed.

“We want to close off certain streets in Sandton to car traffic and instead use these lanes for public transport, walking, cycling and other forms of EcoMobility during the entire month of October 2015,” said Mayor Tau when he announced the festival project. “We want to show residents and visitors that a carfree city is possible and that public transport, walking and cycling can be accessible, safe, attractive and cool!”

During the ecomobility month, certain stretches of streets were closed to automobiles, others restricted to local users only. Added to these were temporary and new permanent cycle lanes, a public transport loop around the CBD, additional bus and extended train services, 10 Park & Ride facilities with non-stop express buses, and contraflow lanes for the peak-direction public transport on arterial roads.

Three factors gave this EcoMobility Festival its distinctive “Johannesburg” characteristics and made it an unprecedented exercise.

First, the city ran a bold activation and multi-media campaign for awareness-raising and behaviour change. On multiple channels including TV, radio, newspapers and social media, one would see the motto: “Change The Way You Move”. The campaign was ambitious in that it targeted 75,000 commuters-by-car, offering alternative, ecomobile options for their choice of transport mode.

Second, the festival was in fact a month-long urban reality lab, or “a CBD going ecomobile”. It encompassed a large-scale test-run for alternative traffic flows, with the closure of the central axis through and a public transport loop around the CBD, managed lanes dedicated to public transport, Park & Ride facilities, cycle paths and others. It also featured zones of customised interventions, namely, links between the Sandton CBD and the Alexandra lowincome settlement, and between the CBD, neighbouring suburbs and the wider metropolitan Johannesburg.

Third, the city organised unprecedented citizens and stakeholder involvement, conducted over 80 consultation meetings, and integrated numerous partners’ activities such as a Freedom Ride and a Discovery Duathlon.

Johannesburg has applied a methodology of implementing the festival in a participatory and responsive way, which I have named TAPAS: “Taking the Pulse and Acting Swiftly”. The city maintained an ongoing process of observing the streets and listening to people and media, drawing conclusions, and adapting the festival features through interactive, responsive implementation in real time. The city mastered proactive thinking and ongoing risk assessment and mitigation.

While the numbers suggest that the festival has only led to modest changes in travel behaviour, the ecomobility month has fulfilled the Mayor’s goal to “create noise”. For the first time in South Africa, urban transport became subject to a wide and intensive public debate.

Kaohsiung 2017: Ecomobile Hamasen
The Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung will be hosting the third EcoMobility Festival in October 2017. The Hamasen neighbourhood in Kaohsiung’s old harbour area shall be freed from cars and motorcycles, and resident as well as visitors shall move around in an ecomobile fashion.

Observations and Learnings
Suwon and Johannesburg have much in common. Their mayors are young, green-minded and ambitious. They wanted to shape, not just administer their city. They were ready to lead and take a risk. Both were aspiring to free an area from cars, introduce ecomobility and encourage their citizens to adopt an ecomobile lifestyle.

The choice of the festival areas then determined the different scopes of interventions, features of street space and infrastructure, and take-up by the citizens.

Both the cities of Suwon and Johannesburg launched a process of unprecedented involvement of the public, interaction with stakeholders and engagement with partners. There were enthusiastic supporters but also fierce opponents. In Suwon, the city established its festival project office in the neighbourhood and asked its officials to talk to the residents and hold conversations with business people opposing the car-free month. Likewise, in Johannesburg the city opened social media channels for an ongoing dialogue with the citizenship.

It was important that the cities did not see the festival just as an event or happening. Both cities used the festival process to raise awareness of urban transport issues and the need for a change in mobility choices; to mobilise citizens and stakeholders; to make urban mobility a subject of public debate; and to align municipal departments and provincial authorities towards the ecomobility paradigm. Most importantly, both cities used the ecomobility festival for the kick-off of urban transformation processes. In Suwon, there was the cautious renewal and revival of the Haenggung-dong neighbourhood in the old town centre. In Johannesburg, it was the improvement of public transport infrastructure and services in and around the Sandton CBD.

Citizens seemed to appreciate the courageous action by the city governments and responded well to the calls for engagement in the public consultation and discussion processes.

Both EcoMobility Festivals were undoubtedly successful. Locally, they have resulted in lasting improvements of the transport infrastructure and kicked off an open public discussion on future greener lifestyles. Internationally, word of the month-long ecomobility happenings continues spreading and we hope that more city leaders feel encouraged to take bold initiatives towards car-lite cities and ecomobility.

For various community programs in Seoul, the key objective is not driven by outcomes of the projects. Rather, the aim is to use the projects as a platform to build a community of active citizens and increase social capital among residents. In both Dong-level community planning and REMP, community groups initiated through the project process help to sustain the solution-making process at the local level after the initial phases.

The site visits to the Community Power Station at Banghak 3 Dong and Seowon Village are part of the collaborative research project between Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) and Seoul Institute (SI) on “Community Planning and Rejuvenation”, where officers from CLC, Housing & Development Board (HDB), People’s Association (PA) and Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) Office for Citizen Engagement participated in a study trip to Seoul, South Korea from 5-10 February 2017. The research aims to deepen the Singapore research team’s understanding of policies and case studies in Seoul on community planning and rejuvenation through site visit observations and distil learning points from Seoul case studies and policies that are applicable to Singapore.