Socio-Spatial Concerns in Urban Mobility Planning: Insights from Competing Policies in Quito

Abstract

Socio-spatial concerns are gaining increasing attention in the design of interventions for urban mobility. This is especially true in contexts traditionally characterized by structural inequality and high levels of poverty, in which transport can be a decisive contributor to development thanks to its contribution to a higher social inclusion. Amongst them, Latin America has emerged as a significant laboratory for urban and transport policy due not only to its socioeconomic conditions but also to the implementation of different mobility strategies based on the construction of traditional and innovative infrastructures such as subways and bus rapid transit (BRT) systems. These two transport systems can be complementary or alternative to each other: this depends not only on their transport capacity, their economic sustainability, and to their levels of public acceptability but also on social, political, and spatial features of the setting they serve. This paper intends to discuss the socio-spatial consequences that interventions based on different transport systems can generate, examining them in the city of Quito, Ecuador. The discussion is based on the implementation of the existing BRT network and of a subway line under construction. Reconstructing two contrasting transport policies developed in the city in the last 25 years, this paper proposes an overview of the socio-spatial concerns that influenced and were influenced by urban mobility planning in Quito. To do so, this paper reviews and compares the socio-spatial concerns related to BRT and subway corridors, considering their accessibility, the wider urban transformations they promote, their economic sustainability, and the overall public acceptability, estimating to what extent these have influenced the decision to implement a certain transport policy.

Examining the Social Outcomes from Urban Transport Infrastructure: Long-Term Consequences of Spatial Changes and Varied Interests at Multiple Levels

“…Urban infrastructure facilitates spatial changes at a macro scale (i.e., change in spatial structure of a city) and a micro scale (i.e., change in land use and physical environment in a local neighbourhood) as it interacts with urban (re)development processes at city and local neighbourhood levels [7,20,25,26]. At the macro scale, transport infrastructure can enhance connectivity to major nodes, facilitating spatial (re)organisation, e.g., the concentration of social and economic activities in the core of cities [7,27] At the micro scale, an increase in urban transport capacity could facilitate high-density, mixed-use development at the nodes, enhancing attractiveness of a location for certain land uses [28,29].…”

Integrating knowledge forms in public transport planning and policies: the case of the Lisbon metropolitan area

“…Ready-made solutions generated by this kind of technocratic knowledge have often ignored local users and activists, community-based organizations, and complex contexts, thus failing to address urban inequality, income and racial segregation, and exclusionary land practices embedded in the design of urban transport policies (Trounstine 2018;Vecchio, Porreca, and Jácome Rivera 2020). Critics of transport policy based on technical knowledge target the obsolescence of models (Bertolini 2007) and the technocratic nature of the policy process (McArthur 2019), advocating instead the incorporation of participatory opportunities and deliberative processes in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of transport planning and policies (Vigar 2017).…”

“…Multi-level international governance such as in EU also presents opportunities for local capacity building via international networks in urban governance (Pierre 2019). Vecchio, Porreca, and Jácome Rivera (2020) contrast the case of Quito (Ecuador) with other cities in Latin America often seen as notable exemplars of mass transit systems and urban mobility planning, such as Bogotá (Colombia), Santiago (Chile), and Curitiba (Brazil). These examples illustrate the relevance of the diffusion of practice-centered knowledge in the formation and implementation of transport planning and policies.…”

Producción del entorno urbano: un enfoque empírico hacía el concepto de espacio apropiado en Quito

“…La idea que emerge de estas teorías es que el ser humano debería volver al centro del EÍDOS 22 2023 discurso urbano, lo que inevitablemente condicionaría las decisiones de planificación y diseño para crear un entorno apropiado para sus habitantes. En este sentido, algunas producciones académicas (Porreca, 2020), teorizan que la producción de espacio no centrada en el ser humano sea solo un paréntesis relativo al periodo moderno, esto debido a su insostenibilidad por un lado; y por el otro, a las presiones que los organismos internacionales ejercen en la opinión pública con el Human-centered design, los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (United Nations, 2021) y, en última instancia, los modelos de ciudad a 15 minutos (Allam et al, 2021;de Valderrama et al, 2020;Graells-Garrido et al, 2021), que reflejan mucha producción científica acerca de la proximidad urbana (Vecchio et al, 2020) y de las distancias urbano-arquitectónicas (Gehl, 1991(Gehl, , 2014Porreca y Rocchio, 2016).…”