Toward A Framework for Assessing the Fair Distribution of Space in Urban Streets

Abstract

The increasing popularity of street redesigns highlights the intense competition for street space between their different users. More and more cities around the world mention in their planning documents their intention to rebalance streets in favor of active transportation, transit, and green infrastructure. However, few efforts have managed to formalize quantifiable measurements of the balance between the different users and usages of the street. This paper proposes a method to assess the balance between the three fundamental dimensions of the street—the link, the place, and the environment—as well as a method to assess the adequation between supply and demand for the link dimension at the corridor level. A series of open and government georeferenced datasets were integrated to determine the detailed allocation of street space for 11 boroughs of the city of Montréal, Canada. Travel survey data from the 2013 Origine-Destination survey was used to model different demand profiles on these streets. The three dimensions of the street were found to be most unbalanced in the central boroughs of the city, which are also the most dense and touristic neighborhoods. A discrepancy between supply and demand for transit users and cyclists was also observed across the study area. This highlights the potential of using a distributive justice framework to approach the question of the fair distribution of street space in an urban context.

Examining the geometry of streets through accessibility: new insights from streetspace allocation analysis

“…Previous studies that focus on the quantification of streetspace had made important contributions in providing evidence and new methodologies for highlighting the perceived unfairness of existing patterns of streetspace allocation (De Gruyter et al, 2022; Gössling et al, 2016; Guzman et al, 2021; Lefebvre-Ropars et al, 2021a; Nello-Deakin 2019; Szell 2018). The methodological approach adopted so far is to aggregate data into area geographies for which other transport indicators are available.…”

“…Third, while setbacks of the property lines that define the boundaries of the street and variations of the curb line that delimit pedestrian and vehicular space might exist within a street segment, particularly in organic street layouts, it is assumed that for most street segments a cross-section sample is accurate enough to represent the streetspace allocation of a given street. It is worth mentioning that to overcome this limitation, it is possible to increase the density of cross-sections (Lefebvre-Ropars et al, 2021b; Palominos 2021), however, one cross-section is considered sufficient as an average measure to analyse accessibility using street network analysis.…”

“…Collectively, these studies support the hypothesis that more space is assigned to the private car; the less energy and space efficient transport mode. Although important progress in addressing data limitations and processing has been made (Lefebvre-Ropars et al, 2021b; Palominos and Smith 2019; Palominos 2021), the issue of understanding streets as networked elements in which streetspace re-allocations can have a knock on effect in the street system has not been fully addressed. In summary, in the very few attempts to measure streetspace allocation, diverse approaches have been adopted and methodological consensus is yet to be developed.…”

“…For instance, the interest for improving the environmental quality of streets of local businesses coexist with the need to provide the convenient and desirable conditions for short and medium distance trips. Currently, with few recent exceptions (Lefebvre-Ropars et al, 2021b; Nello-Deakin 2019), a major obstacle to conducting streetspace allocation analysis is the lack of critical or reliable data that allows for examining local and strategic urban scales simultaneously. The picture of streets being highly contested gets further complicated with patterns of urban growth coupled with the adoption of emergent mobility technologies which threaten to reproduce private car dominance in many cities worldwide (Sevtsuk and Davis 2019).…”

Assessing the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Subway Ridership and on the Interactions with other Transportation Modes

“…Policies were also rolled out to promote cycling and ensure social distancingsee (Buehler and Pucher 2021) for a review of all types of measures implemented. In Montreal, "public health corridors" were put in place, which increased the amount of street space allocated to active transportation and led to more fair allocation (Lefebvre-Ropars et al 2021). Furthermore, modal shifts from transit to cycling and bikesharing may have been made (Teixeira and Lopes 2020;Das et al 2021).…”