As part of the REMEDIO project, a participative process has been developed in order to face the urban redesign of one of the principal roads of Thessaloniki, following the general SUMP concepts. The redesign of this important urban axis of the city was a response to the congestion issues and high traffic affecting quality of life and health of users, workers and neighbours. The vision and objectives were developed thanks to public consultation to record stakeholders’ and citizens’ opinions and technical processing with relevant experts. Active involvement of stakeholders in planning helped create ownership of the solution.
Participatory planning to redesign a central axis in Thessaloniki, Greece
Challenges addressed
- Lack of an intermodal transport perspective
- Plan an integrated redesign of a main road axis of Thessaloniki
- Possible disconnection between the phases of analysis, participation and urban design.
Main objectives
- Improve the environmental conditions and the pedestrian comfort.
- Reduce illegal car parking along the road
- Improve intermodal transports and the coordination among the different road functioning.
- Coordinate the different phases of urban planning through the Integrated Mobility tool.
- Increase quality of life by decreasing environmental impacts and promoting participatory governance.
External resources
REMEDIO project website:
Facts
Project type Bike-sharing system
Promoter REMEDIO Project
Collaborators Split Council
Start date 2019
Funding Interreg-MED
Website Split bike sharing system
Project description
REMEDIO High-density areas surrounding the city centres with commercial and directional roads, often suffer from traffic jam. Beyond pollution, there are several consequences associated to traffic congestion, like the risk to become a wound within the city connectivity system, or a factor of additional economic crisis and even social exclusion. The main objective of the project was to strengthen the capacity of cities to use low carbon transport systems and include them in their urban plans by testing existing mobility solutions, through an assessment tool, called the IMT_Integrated Modelling Tool (a multi-thematic modelling suite, designed to test and evaluate the effectiveness of soft actions mobility solutions), and participatory governance schemes. The main project outputs have been: (a) The creation of an Integrated Modelling Tool (IMT) for low carbon mobility solutions assessment; (b) To set a new participative governance model fùor roads, based on the “horizontal condominium” concept, an innovative model of participatory governance based on sharing a common vision together with the main stakeholders; (c) To pilot mobility measures (d) Develop awareness and educational paths on sustainable urban mobility behaviour.
Impact and results
The simulation has paved the way to redesign the city’s central road. The participatory governance to redesign a principal axis is key to improve the quality of life not only for the people who live there, but also for those who work and spend time in the area.
