CoLLaboratoire for Activating Multi-modal Mobility: One Public Space at a Time

CAMMM Cities Research

The first objective of the research is devoted to the study and analysis of 4-6 major cities around the world, in order to understand how these cities have become successful in shifting urban mobility patterns.

This work is divided into two main parts:

In the first part, we identify, analyse, and understand the best practices in other cities with regards to various qualitative and quantitative characteristics that encourage citizens to embrace multi-modal mobility.

In the second part, we develop a query tool to allow us to compare Montreal’s public transport situation to that of the other selected cities.

Understanding Montreal’s Shifting Mobility Challenges : Policies and Habits

Our social media experiment and survey has been constructed following ongoing municipal policies regarding COVID-19 lockdown and opening up in Montreal since March 2020. Questions were promptly posted on social media as changes in policy were made by the municipal, provincial and national governments. The data was collected though interactive polls on Instagram (@collaboratoire) where the Montreal community shared their experiences regarding how their commuting modes have changed during this challenging time of pandemic.

It is interesting to see how, over such a short span of time, views of public mobility and transport in the city have shifted. This ongoing research is intended to follow the COVID-19 changing policies and how they impact mobility and public transport use in the city of Montreal.

Project: CoLLaboratoire for Activating Multi-Modal Mobility: One Public Space at a Time 

Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant

Description:

The overall goal of this partnership is to raise awareness and encourage behavior shifts towards more sustainable urban mobility by understanding how public spaces can become knowledge exchange nodes. Its aims to move the climate change conversation into our community (raising awareness) and to awaken environmental behavior (engagement) to empower citizens to change their urban mobility behavior.

The first objective is to identify, analyze, and understand the best practices in other cities in North America and Europe for public space interventions that encourage citizens to embrace multi-modal mobility. The second objective is to test, through a series of community workshops, in three different areas in the City of Montreal, these methods (along with others). The workshops will allow the co-development of ideas for public spaces – ideas that will help citizens better understand issues related to multi-modal mobility and encourage behavior shifts. The ideas developed during the workshops will be presented in exhibitions, both online and in the public realm to further build dialogues with the community. The third objective is to develop these exercises, tools, and methods, into an exportable platform.