Sustainable mobility through child-friendly neighbourhoods

EU
Thu 20.02.2020 11:00 to 12:00

Sustainable mobility through child-friendly neighbourhoods - three examples from Munich, Zurich and Graz

Children are the future users of our cities. That’s why it’s important to sensitize them to the issues of sustainable mobility and child-friendly (public) spaces at an early age, thus promoting mobility behavior appropriate to the city. In the one-hour Webinar we’d like to adress this topic, using three examples implemented by the cities of Munich, Graz and Zurich within the the EU-Projekts Metamorphosis project.

The webinar will take place on Tuesday, 20 February 2020, at 11 am (registration-button at the bottom).

The webinar contains four parts. The three cities present their projects and leave room for questions directly afterwards. The three presentations will be followed by a general Q&A session. Everyone is invited to join the webinar and to forward this invitation to interested persons.

Munich: Gamification as a strategy to promote active mobility
The game "kreuz & quer" is designed to motivate children and their families to explore their own neighbourhood in an active way. The aim of the game is to collect as many kilometres as possible by finding and scanning small boxes scattered around the neighbourhood. On a website, a ranking shows which team is leading (walked the longest distance). The game lasts about seven weeks, in order to integrate the active form of mobility into everyday life in the longer term. The feedback is very positive: the game has created new friendships and social contacts. In addition, the game has promoted cycling culture, for example by taking families on cycling trips to search for the boxes.

Zurich: School project week
During a project week, middle school students learned about various aspects of urban development and sustainable mobility. In the webinar we will focus on two courses. In the module "Neighbourhood Detectives" the students explore their immediate neighbourhood: Which public places please, which disturb? And above all: How could these „flop“ places be improved? The children's ideas will be forwarded to the responsible office of the city. In the second module "Parking Transformation" the children learn what public space is and how it is used. In a workshop, they build a childrens-Bar for school-breaks, which will be placed on a parking lot.

Graz: Living Lab - Reclaiming the street for school lessons and as a space for children to stay
As part of the Metamorphosis project, the areas in front of three schools in the Lend district of Graz were converted multiple times into "Living Labs". The streets in front of the schools were cleared of traffic for a day to a week and transformed into an area for educational purposes and a space for play and leisure activities. In total, over 80 teachers and 1000 students were involved in the Living Labs. Besides the positive effect on the students, it also had a positive effect on the mobility behaviour of all participants: More children come to school on foot or by bike than by car.