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Pandemic-related streets transformations: Accelerating sustainable mobility transitions in Latin America

Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic and the need for physical distancing in public spaces have significant effects on sustainable mobility initiatives. Many cities around the world promoted temporary transformations of streets, bkp_redistributing road space to create emergency cycleways and expand sidewalks to allow the movement of people while granting a certain physical distance between people. While Europe and, to a lesser extent, North America have initially led these initiatives, Latin America has soon followed suit, without much of their technical experience, governance, resources and sometimes public acceptance for sustainable mobility. The paper examines if and how the major disruptive event posed by the COVID-19 has reconfigured sustainable mobility initiatives in Latin American cities. Interviewing key decision-makers, the paper reviews five initiatives across the region to examine the typology of interventions promoted and the spaces involved, the governance schemes that allowed them and the public acceptance towards such measures. The analysis demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic has fostered a faster adoption of sustainable mobility measures such as emergency cycleways, street pedestrianisations and other traffic calming initiatives, facilitating the creation of new coalitions and the public acceptance of these interventions thanks to the sense of urgency generated by the pandemic.