Planning and Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans: Parallel Orbits or Incompatible Paths?

Abstract

The paper that follows analyzes the basic directions of the Larissa’s Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan and aims at developing a first kind of assessment in relation to whether the plan has achieved its main objectives and how it interacts with the existing urban plot. First results show that emphasis is given to “alternative and more environmentally friendly kinds of circulation” and the emergence of the “neighborhood” as the main spatial scale of reference. The plan tries to manage the traffic issue of the city center, unsuccessfully so far. However, it does not take into account the spatial dimension of land uses. The networking of important functions and service providers is not a priority and, as a general conclusion, the plan does not serve the principle of integration neither guarantees the universal access to basic destinations and services. The paper argues that the plan could be improved by introducing a “bottom-up” design process, incorporating elements of the new and emerging agenda of “urban problems” (e.g. resilience targets) and moving away from the unification of “embellishment” and face the main issues of the real city. Those should be the priorities of the so called “combined and integrated design and planning practices”, which are now missing.