Development of Diagnostics-Interventions Toolkit for Enabling Year-Round Active Mobility

Active mobilities are a central aspect of urgently needed sustainability transitions in urban mobility systems worldwide. Due to the sustained physical exertion which directly contributes to the specific mobility effort, and different exposure to the environmental conditions in comparison to other transport modes, active mobilities have a very important role in positively impacting human and planetary well-being. Despite the clear and pressing need to increase the share of active mobility throughout the year, there are three major challenges that need to be overcome. First, specific groups of residents have to change their everyday mobility habits, which is influenced by changes in a range of their capabilities, opportunities and motivations. Second, in order to enable those changes, there is a need to prioritize and package effective and implementable interventions in the public space. Third, there is a need to develop planning processes, procedures and cultures that would enable cooperative and communicative decision-making across a range of urban mobility stakeholders. With those challenges in mind, this report describes the development of Diagnostics-Interventions Toolkit for diagnosing contextualized challenges and responding to those with identifying adequate interventions. The development of this toolkit has been done in close collaboration between planning practitioners and researchers, through a series of questionnaires, interviews, site visits, and workshops, supported by research-based and professional literature scans, all integrated through soft systems methods. The report outlines the idea of communicative planning as underpinning the toolkit development, presented alongside specific toolkit requirements based on the notions of usefulness and usability in planning support systems. In addition, the report describes the toolkit framework, presently envisioned as nine toolkit modules. Besides the framework, the report describes the role of the toolkit in relation to common planning activities and actors and the iterative approach for the toolkit use process itself. Finally, the report depicts wireframes for each of the currently envisioned modules, spanning from those focused on development of resident personas in order to understand behavioural change challenges, to modules focused on interventions packaging and organizational cultures, which relate more directly to the second and third overarching challenge mentioned above. With an onward look, the report sets the stage for further research and development activities within this project, which will continue in close collaboration between planning practitioners and researchers, to iteratively test and refine the toolkit through specific piloting cases across the partner municipalities. Besides that, the report is potentially useful for other research and development project across the world, by opening new pathways in both systems and transdisciplinary thinking - which are essential for path breaking away from the present-day absolutely unsustainable urban mobility systems.