Mobility / Transport
(Ins Quatre Cantons)
The meeting in Institut Quatre Cantons, Barcelona, (Spain) took place from the 17th to the 21st of October 2022.
During this week, both teachers and students participated in a variety of activities which aimed at raising awareness of the need to promote sustainable mobility in cities in order to make them more liveable places. Sightseeing and visits to relevant places were also included in the programme.
Here you will find listed and explained all the activities carried out as far as the topic sustainable mobility is concerned.
Presentations "Mobility in your city"
This activity opened the week and was the result of a previous research that the students from the different schools had carried out before coming to the meeting. The objective was to to get to know some relevant information about mobility in the five students' cities, its impact on the population and room for improvement, having in mind questions such as : How would you describe mobility in your city? Does it fit people's needs? Does your city have good air quality? Does your city have public space that favours active mobility?
The different presentations can be found in the following links
Guided visit to two urban examples of new tendencies in mobility in Barcelona.
In order to know what major urban transformations in terms of mobility have been implemented in the city of Barcelona, both students and teachers attended two different guided tours, the Superblock Sant Antoni by Emeka Okpala, and the Motorway transformation at Les Glòries by Ole Thorson.
The first tour showed students and teachers an example of a urban transformation that provides more space for pedestrians, lower speed and fewer cars,. The second one dealt with the transformation carried out in the urban motorway in Les Glòries, which meant mainly noise protection, more space for pedestrians and a bus lane.
About the experts:
Ole Thorson is an specialist in urban sustainable mobility. He has worked as traffic planner from 1970 to 1989 in the municipality and since then in his consultancy INTRA, which is specialized in mobility studies. He has been president for the Spanish Traffic Safety Association and the International Federation of Pedestrians-IFP.
Emeka Opala is an specialist in urban sustainable mobility. He has worked by near a decade in INTRA with this type of mobility and is president of Catalunya Camina, an association which organizes lectures, talks and informative round tables to raise awareness among users of transport methods as far as security, respect and civility are concerned.
Interactive session at EIT Urban Mobility
EIT Urban Mobility is an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Since January 2019, they have been working to encourage positive changes in the way people move around cities in order to make them more liveable places.
Our visit consisted of a very interesting interactive session, divided into two parts. During the first one, different experts presented in what ways a city can become more sustainable in terms of mobility exemplifying it with current projects they are working on. In the second part, students where asked to work collaboratively and provide their own proposals of improvement according to he examples given previously.
Using sustainable transport: Bike ride along the beaches and parks of Poblenou
The objective of this activity was, on one side, to promote the use of the bicycle as a sustainable means of transport in the city and, on the other side, provide a fun way to go on an easy and nice bike ride along the beaches and parks of the Barcelona coast, crossing the Parc del Fòrum de les cultures, and reaching the mouth of the Besós. The activity was organized by Biciclot, a work cooperative, placed in the same neighborhood as the school, with a vocation for service, social and environmental commitment. They promote the bicycle as an ecological, economical, healthy means of transport and for sustainable mobility.
A Fake instagram to promote sustainable mobility.
As a closing activity, students were asked to work collaboratively in small groups to elaborate an awareness product to promote sustainable mobility and present it afterwards.
The activity consisted on simulating the feed of an instagram account of someone, preferably their age, who likes promoting sustainable habits in terms of mobility or likes showing examples of sustainable mobility in the city. You can find the guidelines for the activity here.
These are two examples of the Instagram feeds they elaborated:
