EU-funded projects saying yes to inclusive mobility! On 26 October 2023, ELABORATOR joined urban mobility projects UPPER and SMALL in the latest iteration of the POLIS Just Transition Webinar series.
These three initiatives are at the forefront of transforming urban mobility into an inclusive and accessible experience for all users: they are tackling the longstanding issue of designing cities and transport systems around the needs of a privileged few, which has subsequently led to the exclusion of substantial portions of the population from accessing essential services. The webinar explored concrete examples from these European projects, highlighting their innovative pilots that are implementing cutting-edge concepts to achieve a truly inclusive mobility.
ELABORATOR: A truly bottom-up agenda
ELABORATOR was represented by our partner urbana, emphasising our bottom-up, holistic approach to enhancing a safe, inclusive, and sustainable urban mobility.
Eva Grigoriadou and Pinelopi Alexiou presented the gendered and intersectional impacts of urban planning, and how ELABORATOR aims to address this through an inclusion plan to aid our cities in really understanding inclusive mobility. Our project stands out by co-creating actions with citizens, policymakers, and others, focusing on inclusivity and gender in urban planning.
Transport and mobility have a direct impact on the quality of life in the city, and thus it must reflect the needs and demands of a wider variety of users - Eva Grigoriadou, Architect, Director at URBANA.
An understanding of privilege and marginalisation is essential- and Eva Grigoriadou explained how axes of identity shape the ability- and inability- to access and benefit from urban mobility services. “Taking a gender lens helps us to explore this further,” noted Grigoriadou, “where we see caregiving and safety has not been placed at the forefront of planning, with devastating impacts on women, and minorities.”
Grigoriadou illustrated the ways urban planning, which has placed car travel at the centre of travel, has distinct gendered impacts, in their marginalisation of pedestrian transit and public transport use - where women make up a huge proportion of these groups.
What is really critical in the ELABORATOR approach, is that all these actions will be co-created with citizens, policymakers and others [...] There is a danger in making assumptions about people and some groups, it is important to ask them and incorporate them is the first step. - Eva Grigoriadou, Architect, Director at URBANA.
So, what is our project doing? In developing a catalogue of terms to avoid using any words/phrases to be used instead, as well as guidelines and indicators, we aim to aid practitioners in understanding inclusivity and gender in urban planning, and applying this to different local contexts.
urbana is also coordinating internal trainings for the partners to understand inclusivity and gender perspective in urban planning and mobility, and will organise participatory activities in the participating cities to better understand the diverse mobility needs of different social groups and integrate them in the proposed interventions.
Overall, the event was a great opportunity to exchange with other projects holding a mission to foster transport systems available to everyone.
To find out more about the webinar, read the full news article on the POLIS website here.