Living streets: how pedestrians and cyclists can share places in the urban landscape

Cars have played a crucial role in shaping cities by intricate infrastructure systems for transport and have transformed the evaluation and planning process for the future changes in urban mobility. Designers often give cars more relevance than people, but drivers are first of all pedestrians, aren’t they? Pedestrians and cyclists have the right to reach every place; this is why a strategy is needed to shift the focus towards on creating a widespread network of cycling-pedestrian paths whatever the street dimension is. “Pratomobile” is a research by design started from the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (2017) of Prato, in Tuscany, and entrusts the street as a catalyst for urban change that enhances the quality of public spaces, also by integrations with the Urban Forestry Action Plan (2018). The project concerns two of the most congested streets in the urban area and it critically measures the opportunity to create shared or separate paths for cyclists and pedestrians according to administration policies and dimensional constraints. The design process revealed benefits and values of shared places in narrow spaces, in order to avoid spatial fragmentation in extremely tight exclusive-use corridors. Although shared paths are frequent in urban parks and suburban or rural areas, they conversely are uncommon in densely built environments, due to the cultural belief that they may cause several conflicts among different users. The solution to this issue lies in a change in attitude and behaviour by looking at a past when cars were not the leading subject of planning processes and street were places for collective urban life. Present challenges and questions for a new, sustainable and multifunctional city, turn back streets from infrastructures to places, combining and integrating every element needed for city landscape’s efficiency and efficacy: water, soil trees and people.