How is the redesign of public space for active mobility and healthy neighborhoods perceived and accepted? Experiences from a temporary real-world experiment in Berlin

Kurzfassung

For developing healthy and environmentally friendly cities an innovative redesign of urban infrastructure is necessary. However, changes to the current infrastructure are not always adopted and accepted immediately. Therefore, it is crucial to understand why people accept or refuse the transformation of public space towards sustainable mobility. Taking the example of Berlin, a four-week real-world experiment was conducted in summer 2021 where a street was transformed to a car-free square. Parklets, wooden platforms on parking slots, made this alternative use of space visible for residents and enabled them to experience the infrastructural change in their daily lives. However, these temporary experiments and infrastructural change in general are controversial among residents. After the intervention, we measured residents’ acceptance as attitude and intention to act (protest etc.) within a household survey (N = 196). Using regression analyses, we examine the influence of socio-demographics and psychological variables (perceived fairness, affect and place attachment) on acceptance. The survey shows that nearly as much participants are in favor of the redesign compared to the rejection of the redesign. Moreover, we found that on attitudinal level, acceptance is influenced by perceived fairness, affect, place attachment and age. Whereas for acceptance as an intention to protest only perceived fairness plays a significant role. This demonstrates that the mobility transition is influenced by the idea of fairness. If the benefits are clearly recognizable for different population groups and the distribution of space feels fair, changes to the built environment are more easily accepted.