The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our cities in monumental ways with no sector likely being more severely impacted than transport. Lockdowns, physical spacing, transport restrictions and stay-at-home guidelines have transformed personal mobility and highlighted the mistakes of an unbalanced pro-car culture that defined a century of urban planning. One immediate effect of the virus in relation to travel demand and supply was the emergence of active travel modes because of their unique ability to provide a socially distanced way of transport. Cycling is one of the modes that has enjoyed significant attention. Numerous cities have reallocated street and public space to cyclists and introduced pro-bike interventions like pop-up cycle lanes, e-bike subsidies, free bike-share use and traffic calming measures. This newly found outbreak-induced momentum creates an opportunity to establish a new ethos that allows the promotion of potentially permanent strategies that may help cycling to be (re-)established as a robust, mainstream and resilient travel mode for inner city trips and not as a second-class alternative operating under the automobile’s giant shadow. This paper provides a state-of-the-art description of the anti-COVID cycling-friendly initiatives that have been introduced globally, the successes and failures of these initiatives, the lessons learnt that can help us redefine the bicycle’s role in local societies today and a best cycling practice policy guide for planning a more bike-centric future.

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In Mediterranean climate areas, wildfires are one of the most critical problems bringing about several negative impacts (loss of human life, infrastructure damages, landscape transformation, natural environment deterioration, etc.). Fires pose great dangers not only for rural areas, but also for suburban or even urban areas. The aim of the research is to detect areas vulnerable to wildfire in Attica Region and then to examine the critical factors affecting the risk degree in macro and microscale. In the first step we examine the wider study area, which is close to vulnerable areas in a zone at least 1km wide. This examination includes the factor of vegetation along with other factors such as road network, aspect, slope etc, aiming to detect the exact area vulnerable to fire. The second step focuses on a vulnerable study area individually, for identifying and measuring the factors that affect the risk degree in microscale. The most notable factors are: a) population density, b) connectivity of the road network, c) geometric features of the streets, c) location of fire stations and police departments, d) existence of open spaces, e) parking conditions and f ) existence of vulnerable facilities. The wider study area (macroscale) is the Regional Unit of Eastern Attica and the main study area (microscale) is the settlement of Saronida. The findings indicate that several rural and peri-urban areas inEastern Atticaare vulnerable to wildfire. Particularly, crucial issues regarding microscale are the low roadway width values and the inadequate connectivity of the network structure.

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