The promotion of active travel is deemed a crucial component of the transition to sustainable urban mobility. Several barriers hinder its policy implementation and uptake. Some evidence suggests that ...capacity building could be a useful tool for deepening sustainability efforts. This concept involves the development and deployment of skills and resources. However, a clear framework for understanding the dimensions of capacity building for active travel is lacking. Furthermore, most research and findings use cases within a Global North context, constricting implications and transferability to the Global South, especially to African cities. This study responds to the dearth of scholarly work exploring Global South cases and fills a knowledge gap regarding capacity building in the case of active travel. Through a literature review, we examined the dimensions of capacity building that are necessary to improve active travel in selected African countries. We focus on multilevel transportation governance with highlights from five African cities. Our findings suggest that the literature and policies on transport in Africa have key dimensions for capacity building for active travel but lack the introduction of key instruments and strategic pathways to meet these requirements for improved sustainable mobility. We propose a thematic guiding framework that delineates the strategic application of capacity building at three levels of governance. This framework helps integrate capacity building for active travel policies and implementation at the institutional, individual, and environmental levels.
A longstanding mantra is that city governments lack capacities for agile, nimble change; such lack of capacity is starkly realized in how streets are governed. Exhaustive layers of codes, regulations ...and guidelines support a single objective: moving automobiles. The networks of streets themselves, together with the legislative and institutional networks that guide their character, are in dire need of being modernized. This viewpoint recounts a current perspective of city street governance, formulated by antiquated legislation and procedures; it points to an automobile-dominated regime that restricts innovation. We propose and describe three principles to support innovation and accelerate transformation in how streets are managed: (1) a focus on accessibility, (2) the power of local government, and (3) reflexive learning that draws on strategic experiments with city streets.
•Recounts current local challenges of confronting auto-dominance•Broader restructuring is needed of city streets the ways they are managed.•We propose three governance principles to accelerate an alternative trajectory.•Prioritizing accessibility and reflexive learning can build strategic capacity.
Realising policy solutions needed to achieve ‘sustainable mobility’ is difficult because, for one, they require a strategic capacity for “coordinated action” across multiple actors and organizations. ...Policy learning and policy transfer have been discussed for decades as a way for policy makers to acquire capacity to effect change. However, the process linking policy learning and transfer to the building of strategic capacity remains a black box. One possible reason for this gap is how learning is conceptualised and measured in contemporary transport policy studies. We turn to conceptual and empirical knowledge from education, organizational development, human resources, environmental sciences, and business strategy and management to expand our understanding of learning processes for strategic capacity building. The purpose of this paper is to tease out relevant implications for transportation planning by (1) building a theoretical and empirical database of learning for capacity building across disciplines; (2) examining how such learning is conceptualised and measured, with particular attention to how the literature links learning and strategic capacity building; and (3) reflecting on the implications for the transportation planning field. Findings demonstrate that learning is an integral part of a larger process (such as ‘innovation’), and mechanisms and conditions of the process drive learning and capacity-building, often accompanying each other. For example, an existing organizational culture that supports learning (condition) demonstrates matured practices of horizontal communication systems and relationship building (mechanisms). We end the paper with a discussion on implications for transportation planning, both in research and practice. Adding to the discourse on policy learning and transfer, we point to policy learning as a potentially valuable pathway for building a strategic capacity to coordinate action.
Transport planning and policy is increasingly being called to action in ways that differ from practices of yesteryear. Varied segments of society are increasingly looking to city streets—the ...workhorse of a city's transport system—as places to enact change. Namely, to change their character away from the type of streets pervasive in auto-oriented urban environments. Acutely experienced during the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency response measures from many cities across the world abruptly altered the nature and purpose of street space. These “street experiments” fueled an opportunity, in part, to explore a transition to practices prioritizing forms of sustainable mobility such as walking and bicycling. This research inventories street-focused emergency response measures from the 55 largest cities in the US. We devise a rubric to systematically assess and locate characteristics of these measures that enable a transition. Results show that five “innovator” and several “early adopter” cities are using COVID conditions to test new forms of streets and in some cases, street networks. These cities excelled in conveying a vision for alternative future, articulating implementation pathways, leveraging political capacity, and circulating information. After six months, half of the cities continue their efforts, including only six which have expanded. The few showing continued strength demonstrate endeavors to evaluate the experiments, validate their feasibility, and embed the experiments into existing sustainability policy. These components, when leveraged together, could seed innovative break-throughs in how city streets are used, designed, and standardized. The paper establishes baseline evidence on which future research efforts can build and provides empirical evidence on early stages of the experimentation and transition processes of urban mobility systems.
•We analyze early stages of urban experimentation with streets from 55 US cities.•We assess transformational qualities with a novel rubric methodology.•“Innovator” cities excel at feasibility and communicative elements.•6-month follow-up assessment shows only half have continued.•Implications describe conditions which may spur sustainable transport networks.
Best practices are prevalent in all fields of planning and act to highlight effective and implementable examples, set standards, and generally assist 'evidence-based' policy-making. In doing so, they ...frame what futures are desirable and play a role in shaping the planned environment. Despite this power, little is known about how certain policies come to be considered best practices. This article takes a case of best practice making in an EU INTERREG project and illuminates the processes and justifications used to select and formulate best practices. Reviewing project documents and interviewing those involved in selecting possible best practices, demonstrates who decides what should be exemplified, how the decisions are taken, and on what grounds choices are made. The varied and subjective reasonings we find to justify best practices calls into question their perceived neutrality and sturdiness as policy-making instruments. However, selecting best practices, as a process itself, is not without benefits for participants as the reflective element enabled unique forms of learning, opening up wider questions about what function best practices have in making policy.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Quantity and quality of social relations correlate with our happiness and physical health. Our (feeling of) connectedness also matters for the efficacy and functioning of communities and societies as ...a whole. Different mobility practices offer different conditions for being exposed to other people and the environment. Such exposure influences a sense of being connected to places, communities and societies. In transport planning practice and research, these relations are slowly getting attention. In this paper, we develop an analytical framework that offers a comprehensive understanding on if and how one's experiences of being on the move influence the ability of an individual to develop a sense of connectedness. We develop hypotheses about these possible relations, that link literatures from mobilities research and sociology to advance transport planning research and practice. First, we discuss how the experiences of being mobile using different transport modes set different stages for the potential exposure to a diversity of socio-spatial environments. Second, we translate this into an analytical framework for understanding the relationships between connectedness and using different mobility modes. In the final part of the paper, we illustrate this by operationalising a number of potential indicators of connectedness (as dependent variables).
Attempts to pursue sustainable mobility face widespread challenges. One key way of approaching these challenges is through policy transfer and policy learning; indeed, the practice of learning from ...elsewhere is encouraged at various levels of government. This paper contends that a better understanding of what facilitates learning through policy transfer might support further change, yet such examinations remain underdeveloped in the field of transport. This paper synthesises key concepts and factors that drive this learning process, by reviewing 65 papers on transport policy published between 2011 and 2020. Our findings testify to the growing prevalence of policy transfer research and emerging critical perspectives on the transfer and translation of global ideas. We uncover critical factors of the learning process, including settings where learning takes place, inter-actor relations, and organisational and institutional patterns. While most papers reviewed here aimed to examine learning, few employ theories to measure the concept. Consequently, one of our main conclusions is that relatively little is known about how and to what extent learning, triggered by experiences from other contexts, is actually transformed into action. Suggestions include more systematically focusing on organisational and institutional dimensions and concerted trans-disciplinary efforts to close the gap between research and practice.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Conferences are theorized as crucial sites, not only for professional development, but also for policy learning. However, little empirical evidence has examined pathways for why and how learning is ...realized. Using a unique case approach, this paper unravels conference learning dimensions by combining literatures of policy transfer and policy mobilities with situated learning theory. Our case was a four-day international conference on cycling, taking place in the Netherlands, a country well-known for high rates of cycling and commonly sought for advice on cycling policy. Using a questionnaire with participants (n = 293) together with ethnographic fieldwork, we examine key attributes. Structure for fieldwork derived from situated learning theory, where learning is a social phenomenon embedded in sensory and spatial circumstances. Findings demonstrate that acquiring technical understanding (i.e. design specifications, sample policy language) was less prominent than the acquisition of social and experiential knowledge. Additionally, the bicycle acted as a sensorimotor transition instrument for spatial discovery, evoking emotion, and social connection. The conference represented an opportunity to convene both tacit and explicit knowledge, where an embodied experience (for example, riding a bicycle in the Netherlands) may also act as critical asset to professional development in this emerging practice. The paper adds to the debate about learning in transport policy practice by unfurling contextual mechanisms and engaging with practitioners in "their world" - an ordinary practice of attending a conference in a unique location.
A growing body of work conceptualizes study visits or study tours as a tool to accelerate policy transfer of, for example, best practices. Participation in study tours appears increasingly common for ...city management and decision makers involved in transportation policy. This paper extends current research to explore how knowledge gained from study tours transfers to an organizational or inter-organizational level. We aim to generate insights about specific characteristics of study tours that facilitate knowledge transfer. To do so, this study conceptualizes study tours as “trainings”, borrowing concepts and metrics from human resource development (HRD) literature on “learning transfer”. We employ a mixed-method approach. A survey was conducted (n = 109) with US-based city management and officials who participated in study tours on cycling policies. Results demonstrate four influential characteristics of study tours: individual learning, leadership participation, knowledge integration activities, and positive group dynamics. In-depth interviews (n = 15) suggest nuances of these mechanisms. The paper concludes with a reflection of how transportation organizations learn from study tours.
•Study tours are increasingly common for transport professionals and decision makers.•We use theory and derive metrics from human resources and business management.•We generate insights about characteristics of study tours that enable knowledge transfer.•Knowledge integration activities were key ancillary incidents of interaction and dialogue.
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