Who's afraid of pedestrianisation? Residents' perceptions and preferences on street transformation

Abstract

While urban pedestrianisation schemes typically attract vociferous opposition, it is often unclear whether these negative views are representative of the general population. For this reason, understanding how residents perceive the impacts of such schemes is critical to their evaluation. To this aim, this article assesses residents' perceptions and preferences regarding the pedestrianisation of multiple streets in the Eixample district of Barcelona in recent years, through a representative survey of the district's residents (n = 1211). Our research examines how residents' views on pedestrianisation vary depending on their mobility habits, sociodemographic background, and the level of traffic calming of the street they live on. Our results show that most respondents (66%) consider that the impacts of existing pedestrianisations have been positive regardless of whether they live on a pedestrianised street or not, even though residents of recently pedestrianised streets are more positive than those living on other streets. At the same time, many residents of pedestrianised streets consider that the benefits of reduced traffic externalities may be partially counterbalanced by new problems caused by an intensive use of public space (e.g. noise from people and cafes, touristification, nightlife). Our results also show that there is a strong relationship between support for pedestrianisation, age and mobility habits: daily car and motorbike users are much less supportive of pedestrianisation than public transport users and cyclists, while support for pedestrianisation decreases markedly with advancing age.