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Filomena Demaio’s thesis work is part of the development of the Bicycle Mobility Plan (Biciplan) for the Municipality of Ascoli Piceno.
Urban and mobility planning practices today face the epochal challenge of sustainability from an environmental, economic, and social perspective, as advocated by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development and the Paris Agreement. Therefore, it is necessary to respond to climate change and the multi-level crisis generated by the pandemic, seeking resilient and effective intervention methods and tools for the recovery of the urban environment in the Italian context, which is more stratified and complex than others.
The main objective of the thesis is to examine the validity and effectiveness of Tactical Urbanism in the cycling field by achieving three key performances:
- – Communicability and evocativeness
- – Acceptability
- – Performability
To partially achieve this threefold objective, the thesis retraces the concepts and principles of Tactical Urbanism, trying to enrich them in the communicative language through the use of evocative visions.
The reconnection and regeneration project is configured as a masterplan of tactical actions derived from the results of analyses and mobility surveys using tools such as GIS, Miovision, FCD and Strava data, and subsequent SWOT analysis. The tactical squares subject to intervention are inserted as new urban centralities in the mesh of paths designed for slow mobility. Pedestrians and cyclists are the protagonists of the planning, reclaiming urban space also through shared design via dedicated workshops.
Tactical actions are proposed as promoters of change and the development of sustainable mobility, communicated through a deliberately exaggerated language to create an impact on users and make them evocative of a possible future envisioned in the Plan.
This thesis is ideally developed in two parts:
- – The first focuses on theoretical-methodological aspects, addressing the issues related to the conceptual definition of sustainable mobility, considering both the theme of urban fabric regeneration and the difficulties related to soft mobility such as road safety, and the technical specifications of the Biciplan: a strategic planning tool functional to the development of cycling. The theme of “Tactical Urbanism” is then addressed, considering its tools, the potential it offers, and an examination of case studies from the Italian and European panorama.
- – The second part is dedicated to deepening the territorial and planning context in which the Biciplan for the city of Ascoli intervenes, describing its main phases and the proposed regeneration project with integrated tactical actions. In this context, original contributions are offered on relevant topics such as traffic analyses through the Miovision tool and a report on travel habits obtained from the processing of FCD data, the problems related to cycling mobility that emerged from questionnaires filled out by residents, and the extent of use of current infrastructure by cyclist users derived from the study of GPS data provided to designers by the Strava Metro application.
