Home-University Commuting Plan: urban culture and mobility public spaces

Abstract

The Home-University Commuting Plan (HUCP) was created to plan the mobility of students and university employees through the creation of physical infrastructure and the implementation of governance policies. Such initiatives show obvious spin-offs on campuses but also within the processes of regeneration and use of public spaces in university cities.

The experience of the University of Genoa (UniGe) is particularly significant in terms of interactions between the University and the public city, both because it is representative of a diffuse territorial polycentrism and because of the weight represented by the UniGe community with respect to the local population (about 7 percent). This paper will therefore investigate the interventions proposed in the first two editions of UniGe's HUCP. In particular, it will be possible to distinguish between infrastructural measures, supporting the sustainable transition of university mobility, and governance measures, designed to optimize the interactions between flows and commuting habits of different city users.

As required by the Decree, interventions are based on the preliminary survey of mobility habits and propensity to change by the University members. In addition, the results thus obtained are significant not only for the social knowledge about the community but also in order for scaling up good practices once tested at the urban level, thus triggering a process of participatory planning within local bodies. At this point, the HUCP is proposed as a tool that also supports the process of integrated planning in public spaces, made indispensable by the complexity of contemporary urban dynamics.