Julio A. Soria-Lara

Using ‘Mobility Environments' in Practice: Lessons from a Metropolitan Transit Corridor in Spain

Abstract The last few years have seen a growing interest in furthering our understanding of the complex relationships between land use and transport. Nevertheless, putting that knowledge into practice in urban transport planning has been adversely affected by the lack of broad consensus on the main concepts and methods used in this field. To address that issue, this paper proposes a new approach based on the concept of ‘mobility environments’ as a new instrument for mobility planning. To illustrate and assess the ‘mobility environments’ approach, an application has been developed for a metropolitan transport corridor in the city of Granada (Spain), where local institutions are funding the implementation of a new light rail system. This paper highlights a number of important findings related to what exactly ‘mobility environments’ are and how they can be used in planning practice.

European spatial planning observatories and maps: merely spatial databases or also effective tools for planning?

Over the past decades, a large number of Spatial Planning Observatories (SPOs) have emerged in Europe in response to certain factors, such as the growing complexity of urban systems, the development of GIScience or European Union territorial policies. Previous studies have shown that SPOs have little effect when confronted with planning practice. It is believed that one of the main reasons is that the maps held by SPOs are not always focused on decision making; however, this argument has not yet been sufficiently proven. To address this problem and inspired by the doctrine of performance-based evaluation for spatial planning, we assess the performance for planning that a relevant number of European SPOs have according to their maps. The assessment takes into consideration two assumptions: (A) maps must be of continuing relevance to the situation as it evolves; (B) maps must help in defining operational decision situations for different focus groups (decision makers, planners, the public). We find that SPO maps could be excellent tools for planning, although an important number of improvements are still needed. In this sense, we discuss the potential role of SPO maps in addressing a collaborative dialogue between key planning agents in analysing urban dynamics, as well as in fostering new urban governance processes through the consideration of public participation.

Towards a more effective EIA in transport planning: a literature review to derive interventions and mechanisms to improve knowledge integration

A set of process-related barriers negatively determines the effectiveness of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in transport planning. Recent research highlights the unstructured stakeholder involvement and inefficient public participation in earlier phases of EIA as key bottlenecks. While the academic literature has produced promising theories for addressing these barriers, they have rarely been translated into solutions applicable and testable in practice. In order to bridge this theory–practice gap, we present a systematic literature review of interventions and mechanisms aimed at facilitating the integration of different sources and types of knowledge during the scoping phase of EIA. This review explores if and how interventions and mechanisms have been conducted in practice; if and why they worked or did not work and how relevant they are for EIA in transport planning. Based on this review, we distil a set of three specific interventions and trigger mechanisms applicable in the context of EIA in transport planning.