MUT'Action - Mobility and Tactical Urbanism in Action

Facing the health emergency prevailing in 2020, the transition of mobility as an immediate response to the crisis represents an important resilience issue for territories. The fear is in particular that of a reinforcement of "auto-solism", as public transport may present a reduced offer and appear less safe in terms of barrier gestures. Contemporary urban forms are questioned in their adequacy to the needs of the inhabitants, while the pandemic poses social distancing as the first collective health measure. The particular moment of urgency of COVID-19 has led public action to seize upon this tactical urbanism, through rapid, low-cost interventions on the roadway. Since March 2020, various temporary urban developments have appeared around the world, modifying the configurations of public spaces and mobility uses: slow streets, open squares, "coronapists", etc. In France, the media craze for the subject attests to the rapid changes that have occurred: nearly a thousand kilometers of temporary bicycle lanes have been set up for deconfinement, facilities that the State wishes to help perpetuate. The promotion of active mobility appears, for the public authorities, as a response to the demand for new modes of travel following the health crisis, so much so that tactical urban planning has emerged as an adequate tool to respond to these imperatives because of its ability to act quickly.

Therefore, it is appropriate to question the impacts of the crisis in terms of mobility and the changes in uses and practices that it has caused and may cause, in relation to a stated objective of transition to sustainable urban mobility that strengthens territorial resilience. The MUT'Action project is one of the 15 winners of the 2020 call for projects "Resilience Grand Est ", a call launched by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, the ANR and the Grand Est Region, on the territorial consequences of the Covid-19 crisis. The project's stated ambitions are to assess the territorial impact of the pandemic on mobility spaces, and to support decision-makers in developing these spaces towards greater sustainability, accessibility and connectivity. The study must also put into perspective various experiments of these urban designs in the Grand Est Region in order to contribute to the reflection and development of innovative planning approaches that can then be applied on other scales, notably national. The program was also accredited in June 2020 as a partnership innovation project by the Pôle Véhicule du Futur.

The interest of the MUT'Action - Mobility and Tactical Urbanism in Action project is to analyze these experiments, their inclusion in more global mobility and resilience strategies, and to identify whether they can be used to redesign the city over the long term. The research questions revolve around three dimensions: Governance, Spatiality, and Temporalities. The main objective of this research is to analyze and rethink, following the Covid-19 crisis, the mobilities, all to contribute to improve the resilience of territories. The multidisciplinary research team is examining in particular the behaviors and conditions of appropriation of modes of mobility with regard to a new trend in the way the city is conceived, as well as the various measures put in place by the public authorities to accompany and initiate changes in terms of mobilities (exploratory walks, pedestrianization, bicycle lanes, etc.) in three medium-sized cities of the Grand Est Region: Mulhouse, Nancy and Reims. The ENSAS/IMM Chair research team works more precisely on the field study of Mulhouse. They observe and analyse the spatial characteristics of the deconfinement installations that have been deployed (materiality, spatial quality, evolution…) from the installation scale to the intercommunal scale.