3 minute read
2.1.3. FMC and Reconnecting residents to proximity services
various cities scaled from home, condominiums areas, neighbourhoods, and district scale (Pisano, 2020, p. 5) In the light of Pandemic and resiliency of communities, following the guidelines of WHO (World Health Organization, 2020) the School of Architecture, Southeast University, China, and the UNESCO Chair in Cultural resource management proposed the model of ‘The Epidemic Prevention Area Concept’. Theses EPA clusters (functional at the district scale) provide a guideline for emergency response mechanism. Pisano, (2020) analysed these concepts based on three following principles of resilience planning i.e.. 1. Decentralization of facilities, opposed to concertation and centralization facilities, populations, governance system 2. Hierarchization of transport and public services, hierarchy of street patterns, services provisions, modes of transport prioritizing sustainable modes like walking and biking. 3. Redundancy of public spaces, i.e. Duplication of critical components of a system to increase the reliability and continuity in case of collapse of main functioning space.
The author compared the EPA cluster concept to post covid recovery strategies of Milan and Paris and he concluded that the FMC’s prescriptive concepts8F8F8 align and its urban planning manifestation overlap with the concept of EPA, particularly, th intention of FMC to reduce urban movements limiting traffic congestion and providing fairer distribution of services. The bikeable cities networks thus created due to FMC shall lead to secondary connection between district centres and the redundant public spaces.9F9F9
Advertisement
2.1.3. FMC and Reconnecting residents to proximity services
The concept of FMC puts forward the paradigm change from providing accessibility through mobility towards access through proximity. The paradigm shift that is already supported by the academia (Bertolini et al., 2005; Solá & Vilhelmson, 2018; The International Transport forum, 2019), is a central piece of international discussions in the light of Pandemic urbanity and the unequal access observed among the residents across cities.
Tan (2021) while writing about local accessibility in FMC in Anglo-Sexon countries highlights about the difference between ‘objective accessibility’ and ‘perceived’ accessibility and adds that measuring (objective) access (to destinations) through traditional objective means of gravity and aggression models differ from the reality. Most of the accessibly studies focus on metropolitan scale, and while the local access studies underestimate the mirages or accessibility shadows. Theses mirages are created
8 The author has highlighted his subjective interpretation of the FMC concept and its strategies due to limited availability of details and data (Pisano, 2020) 9 Moreno’s FMC aspires to create multi-programmable urban spaces with emphasise on optimization and efficiency of space. This goes against the definition of redundancy which entails duplication of critical components (Masnavi et al., 2018). The author implicitly assumes replicated creation of such spaces will align with creation of redundant spaces.
sometimes due to factors of quality of the service which forces residents to travel outside their local radius, or physical barriers like bridges which make it difficult to access on foot or bike while still reflecting that the area to be accessible in studies. The focus on 15-minute access is an opportunity to equally prioritise local access, and thus through actual community engagement, the planners can understand the real barriers, specially of historically excluded communities in planning. A similar view is shared by Steuteville (2021) and Smith (2020) about physical bottlenecks and need to humanise these barriers Another reflection on accessibility mirages comes from the European context in the backdrop of over-toursitification of city centres, calling out for localization of global spaces (Bertaud et al., 2021). The European city centres draw touristic visitors which clash with resident’s perception of places and draws them out of their local areas for amenities, leading to detached of residents to place and increased trips. To support the discussion, Philippe Chiambaretta, the principle architect of the redesign of Champs‑Élysées boulevard describes that although the site is in the centre of the city and highly accessible, yet his predesign survey showed that the only 1 out of 10 strollers in the boulevard were Parisians while others were tourists. (Philippe Chiambaretta as cited in Bertaud et al., 2021) These descriptions of urbanity across the cities align with the recommendations made by OECD report on Post Pandemic report (2020) which suggests cities to shift from focus on economic growth to residents’ liveability.
