Marie FRUIQUIÈRE, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Strasbourg, France
This paper deals with Covid public spaces, urban governance and planning processes that have appeared since March 2020 in favor of active mobility modes. Based on our work within the interdisciplinary research project MUT'Action - Mobility and Tactical Urbanism in Action, our contribution will focus on the novelty, impacts and opportunities of this pandemic projectual mode, in terms of spatial flexibility, design process, urban governance, and mobility transition in the specific context of French intermediate cities in the Grand Est region.
The urban area of Mulhouse in France, particularly impacted by Covid-19 during the first lockdown in 2020, serves as the main investigation field, with the cities of Reims, Nancy and Metz as reference points in the Grand Est. How does this fast and relatively low-cost crisis mode of action, often qualified as “tactical urbanism”, take shape in intermediate cities such as Mulhouse, where mobility - still automobile-dominated - is a major sustainability and resilience issue?
Drawing from field work, planning document analysis, bibliographic monitoring, and interviews with local actors in Mulhouse, as well as official press releases regarding all four cities, the paper addresses the temporal, spatial and political scales of Covid public space projects (mainly the cycling installations), seeking to understand their originality with regard to pre-pandemic mobility policies and mainstream urban planning and design processes, as they have been organized in these cities over the last decade. Moreover, we seek to question the "tactical", temporary or transitory scope of these "crisis" installations, particularly as intermediate cities seem to have been less exposed than large French cities to these projectual modes before the pandemic.
Ultimately, the paper asks to what extent these experiences in intermediate cities foster particular flexibility and adaptability features that could serve to catalyze long-term change for city making.
Mots clés : tactical/temporary urbanism|public space design|Covid-19 pandemic|intermediate city|mobility transition
A104617AG