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Public play space : turning urban space into public places with games and play.

Public Spaces and Urban Resilience: state of affairs in Dutch cities and exploring human and non-human perspectives

This collection of articles contains contributions to the research project ‘From Prevention to Resilience’ (FPtP). In this project, the research team has generated insights and tools for designers, policymakers, and other professionals to contribute to more resilient cities and neighborhoods. The point of departure was public space as a site for intervention, while learning from the ongoing developments revolving around the Covid-19 pandemic. During the early phases of the pandemic, governments initially focused on preventing the virus from spreading. Public spaces came to be seen as potential places for contamination. In response, fences, markings, and barrier tapes were put into place to orchestrate people’s movement and promote physical distance. With our research project, we explored the role that public space could play besides such often ad hoc preventive measures. What other challenges can public space tackle with regard to the various shocks and stressors that hit cities and neighborhoods, now and in the future? And how to tackle these challenges in an integral way? An integral approach to designing public spaces involves many disciplines, and it is to a great extent dependent on local governments’ take on public spaces. To this end, we asked relevant experts to share their disciplinary reflections on a design perspective we have developed in the FPtP project, called Human / Non-Human Public Spaces. An earlier version of this design perspective was handed over to experts to provide feedback from an urban climate adaptation perspective and from a governance and cultural change perspective. Stephanie Erwin and Jeroen Kluck provide concrete feedback on the design perspective and offer a discussion in relation to the field of urban climate resilience. Alex Straathof offers an essayistic text in which he reflects on some of the key notions of the design perspective, reflecting on some of the key notions of the design perspective based on cultural theory and his experience with interventions on the neighborhood level. In parallel, we commissioned two independent experts in the field of spatial development and governance to make a preliminary analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on the government perspectives on public spaces. Both experts were given the same question, but they applied different methods. Hugo Verschoor Plug conducted an analysis on two national policy documents and six ‘omgevingsvisies’ – i.e., strategies on spatial planning and the environment – of large and middle-sized cities: Amsterdam, Breda, The Hague, Groningen, Rotterdam and Zwolle. Denise Vrolijk was asked to interview professionals from a cross-section of Dutch Cities in order to obtain their perspectives on how local governments viewed the role of public spaces in relation to resilience. Together, these analyses provide an overview of the current state of affairs in public space and urban resilience. We thank the authors for sharing their expertise and insights and thereby contribute to the FPtR project. This project is funded by The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), part of the subsidy round ‘COVID 19: Maatschappelijke Dynamiek’, project nr. 10430032010029.

Behavioural perspective on car owners’ uptake of shared e-mobility

In the Interreg Smart Shared Green Mobility Hubs project, electric shared mobility is offered through eHUBs in the city. eHUBs are physical places inneighbourhoods where shared mobility is offered, with the intention of changing citizens’ travel behaviour by creating attractive alternatives to private car use.In this research, we aimed to gain insight into psychological factors that influence car owners’ intentions to try out shared electric vehicles from an eHUB in order to ascertain:1. The psychological factors that determine whether car owners are willing to try out shared electric modalities in the eHUBs and whether these factors are identical for cities with different mobility contexts.2. How these insights into psychological determinants can be applied to entice car owners to try out shared electric modalities in the eHUBs.Research was conducted in two cities: Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Leuven (Belgium). An onlinesurvey was distributed to car owners in both cities inSeptember 2020 and, additionally, interviews wereheld with 12 car owners in each city.In general, car owners from Amsterdam and Leuven seem positive about the prospect of having eHUBs in their cities. However, they show less interest inusing the eHUBs themselves, as they are satisfied with their private car, which suits their mobility needs. Car owners mentioned the following reasons for notbeing interested in trying out the eHUBs: they simply do not see a need to do so, the costs involved with usage, the need to plan ahead, the expected hasslewith registration and ‘figuring out how it works’, having other travel needs, safety concerns, having to travel a distance to get to the vehicle, and a preferencefor ownership. Car owners who indicated that they felt neutral, or that they were likely to try out an eHUB, mentioned the following reasons for doing so:curiosity, attractive pricing, convenience, not owning a vehicle like those offered in an eHUB, environmental concerns, availability nearby, and necessity when theirown vehicle is unavailable.In both cities, the most important predictor determining car owners’ intention to try out an eHUB is the perceived usefulness of trying out an eHUB.In Amsterdam, experience with shared mobility and familiarity with the concept were the second and third factors determining car owners’ interest in tryingout shared mobility. In Leuven, pro-environmental attitude was the second factor determining car owners’ openness to trying out the eHUBs, and agewas the third factor, with older car owners being less likely to try one out.Having established that perceived usefulness was the most important determinant for car owners to try out shared electric vehicles from an eHUB, weconducted additional research, which showed that, in both cities, three factors contribute to perceived usefulness, in order of relevance: (1) injunctive norms(e.g., perceiving that society views trying out eHUBs as correct behaviour); (2) trust in shared electric mobility as a solution to problems in the city (e.g., expecting private car owners’ uptake of eHUBs to contributeto cleaner air, reduce traffic jams in city, and combat climate change); and (3) trust in the quality and safety of the vehicles, including the protection of users’privacy. In Amsterdam specifically, two additional factors contributed to perceived usefulness of eHUBs: drivers’ confidence in their capacity to try out anunfamiliar vehicle from the eHUB and experience of travelling in various modes of transport.Drawing on the relevant literature, the results of our research, and our behavioural expertise, we make the following recommendations to increase car users’ uptake of shared e-mobility:1. Address car owners’ attentional bias, which filters out messages on alternative transport modes.2. Emphasise benefits of (trying out) shared mobility from different perspectives so that multiple goals can be addressed.3. Change the environment and the infrastructure, as infrastructure determines choice of transport.4. For Leuven specifically: target younger car owners and car owners with high pro-environmental attitudes.5. For Amsterdam specifically: provide information on eHUBs and opportunities for trying out eHUBs.