"La mobilità sostenibile:un toolbox per la valutazione dei progetti - Sustainable mobility: a toolbox for design assessment"

The increasing demand of the more and more complex mobility system cannot be met by a greater offer of space for private motorized transport. This stresses the need to make choices fostering the best match between different requirements for rapid and comfortable movements and chances of living in a healthy, pleasant and friendly environment. The real benefit in terms of “change of citizens’ quality of life”, due to interventions in the mobility system, seems a good parameter for evaluating their expediency first and efficacy later. The European research “ASI – Assess implementations in the frame of the Cities of tomorrow” aimed at finding ways to make such evaluation. This volume, characterized by cognitive, theoretical and applicative aspects, deals with the phase the author was responsible for, devoted to develop a toolbox to assess QoL effects of various measures. In particular it describes, starting from the outcomes of the research previous phases, the methodology used and the criteria chosen for defining such toolbox, its structure and the indications for applying it, its test in a pilot study and finally the achieved results. The innovative slant, highly interdisciplinary, reflects some angles proper of the Technology of Architecture sector: the design alternatives assessment, the quality control, the experimentation in terms of social and environmental sustainability, the requirement/performance approach and the consideration of specialization and participation together, in facing actual urban complexity. The toolbox contains a set of instruments and methods, of quantitative and qualitative type, to consider, measure and evaluate properly several aspects of urban environment and life quality, in relation to mobility. The assessment is made on two parallel tracks, “measuring” objective aspects, that concern the evident life conditions, and subjective aspects, that represent the individual appraisal of such conditions, and then confronting them to depict a comprehensive, and then more reliable, evaluation. The toolbox is formalized in enquiry fields, considering main requirement classes and foreshadowing a set of performances to be offered by the urban environment (accessibility, safety, security, comfort, cleanliness, appeal, "business" and liveliness), and in tools for looking into, measuring and evaluating the related main key indicators. To enable comparison, such tools are strictly related: guidelines, to survey and evaluate the urban environment objective aspects, and a questionnaire, aimed at finding out users’, and experts’, subjective perception and evaluation referred to such aspects. Specific methods have been defined for both evaluations and for confronting their results, reported to ranges, adjustable according to the reference values used for defining the thresholds. The analysis of the collected data is a key component of the process. The detailed description of the key indicators, and of the related operational aspects, enables technical staff of the government offices and professionals: architects, engineers, urban planners, environmental psychologists, sociologists etc. to apply the toolbox directly in different local situations, in one, or more, of the three envisaged ways: before the devising and realization of a project, in order to target it properly, to know the priorities of action and to choose the right solutions; before and after the implementation, in order to guarantee and confirm its suitableness; after the implementation, for the validation of the prefixed goals. The outlined toolbox was tested in the town of Umbertide, in the province of Perugia (I) before and after the construction of a cycle path. The data collected with the experimentation are illustrated by drawings, tables, graphics and schemes and are matched with descriptions and considerations on the used methods and the achieved results. A final in depth analysis of the results of the application demonstrates the potentialities of such operative tool.