V- DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

a unique brand allows for the consolidation of the public transport/active mode duo, which like the SwissPass, increases the attractiveness of the intermodality.

d. Moscow metro line

The example focuses on the user experience inside the public transport, which could compete with the private automobile. However, as noted ( E ), the private automobile is an extension of one’s home and the comfort we associate with it.

In that matter, the metro introduced in 2017 in Moscow took an approach toward the comfort of the commuters. By providing USB charging points, free Wi-Fi, monitors to calculate journeys, and adaptive lighting inside the vehicles, the metro switches from a tool for mobility to a place to experience mobility (Sinelchtchikova, 2017).

V- Discussion and conclusions

Relevance of the urban form in the mobility policies analysis:

Urbanisation is a slow process. We can compare it to a sedimentation process, sometimes marked by episodes of disruption (i.e., removal of medieval enclosures, Bruxellisation). This sedimentation simultaneously provides the spatial ground and restrictions for applying the mobility policies analysed above. The findings of the analytical framework (Mäkinen, Kivimaa, & Helminen, 2015) demonstrate the importance of considering urban fabrics when analysing a mobility project or policy in urban mobility transition frameworks. The consideration of urban fabrics is all the more relevant in the context of B-CR, where political boundaries separate virtually continuous urban fabrics. Even if the relationship between the urban form and mobility policies is no more to demonstrate, we have to keep in mind that the urban fabric of the Region(s) and the application of new mobility policies sit on two different temporalities. While the first has a long-term and slow process, the second must set itself within the context of the first. This factor of temporality decoupling constrains the mobility policies to compose with the existing structure, meaning the existing urban fabric.

As shown in the "Transport land-use feedback cycle" scheme(s), the dominant transport system influences the urban fabric in periods of urban and demographic growth. However, according to a recent study (BFP & Statbel , 2021), the Brussels Region is not expected to witness an impressive demographic growth ( just 97,829 growth over 50 years), then we may assume that it is not an urban growth combined with a novel mode of transport that will create a new type of urban fabric. Therefore, we could presume that a slow transformation will somewhat influence the existing urban fabric in terms of the variety and intensity of activities that these urban fabrics will host.

Interlinking of urban fabrics and its effects on policy predictability

Manifestly, the urban forms will continue to influence the results of mobility policies, which explains why the study of the characteristics of each urban fabric is essential when designing and implementing these policies. For case, the PRPS demonstrate how the different urban fabrics are systematically interlinked. Indeed, if the policy targeted just the cars, it still had impacts on the transit and walking cities. Strategic plans like the Good Move encompass a beacon of measures intended to achieve a coherent urban mobility transition. However, in practice, some of the analysed new policies exhibited contradictory potential effects serving concurrently path creation, path destabilisation, and path dependence. Additionally, the question of the urban fabric (predominantly the car city) outside the Brussels Region premises remains difficult regarding outcomes forecasting and management. The different regions compete to attract fiscally lucrative residents (De Maesschalck, Rijck, & Heylen, 2015) , which creates an urban flight where around 10,000 left B-CR to go live in the Flemish Brabant (IBSA & Statbel, 2022). Furthermore, since each Region has its autonomy regarding transport and fiscal policies, the outcomes of the policies are less confident and disjointed paradoxically in a jointed urban fabric. In the absence of a political “Brussels metropolitan area” ( Zone Métropolitaine de Bruxelles) (Van Wynsberghe, Poirier, Sinardet, & Tulkens, 2009) (Dejemeppe & Périlleux, 2012) there is a crucial need for more collaboration between the three regions.

Urban form: from landscape component to regime influencer

“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us,” the famous sentence of Winston Churchill echoes well we the current situation in our cities. It also holds a clue towards shifting our vision of the built environment around us from an unchangeable component to a translation of people’s aspirations. Is it possible to rethink the overall urban structure of the city to attenuate the presence of the private automobile? This ambitious question holds the risk of occulting the importance of the user’s perception. In the interviews, we were expecting more urban and technical answers to attenuate the presence of the private automobile in the car city. Instead, we witnessed a bigger concern on the user experience of the space and on the importance of experimenting before applying measures. We could say that no process of change is successful unless it is also endorsed by citizens whom themselves take responsibility for it. In other words, there is a need to shift the mentality of the population before shifting towards a new structuration of the urban fabrics. Then, if the exnovation of the private automobile should occur, it should include also tackling its by-product, the Single-family detached home.

Conclusion: Towards a bike city?

Throughout the findings of both the analysis of the policies and the interviews, bicycling rose as a credible competitor to the private automobile. Unlike walking, biking allows the user to cover more area/distance in the same amount of time and like the private automobile, the bike is an individual and flexible urban transportation mode. The combination of performing measures like RER vélo and Cairgo

Bike demonstrated the potential to destabilise the automobility regime, provided that Cohesion, Directness, Attractiveness, Traffic Safety, and Comfort (Bendiks & Degros, 2013) are guaranteed for the users. The shaping of the public space to accommodate the bicycling infrastructure is on its way to establishing a new urban form or more exactly, to re-shaping and integrating into the existing urban forms and landscape. We could designate the Bicycle Oriented Development (BOD) as the process that’ll englobe this re-shaping process.

The BOD should not be seen as an addition to the current system of transport but more of a shaker of the existing principles that federate our current mobility pattern. Indeed, the hierarchisation (Pope, 2015) and specialisation of the road network, conjugated with the radioconcentric territorial network from the B-CR to its outskirts undermines the intertwined journeys that can be made on the roads between the centralities inside and outside the B-CR. Nevertheless, the active modes could allow for an isotropic service, especially in the car city where they can penetrate the existing networks and increase the number of intersections. Moreover, these intersections contain a wide range of functions, from housing groups to sometimes recreational complexes or business parks and by linking and robustifying these intersections we could ensure the destabilising of the automobility regime. To conclude, to achieve a qualitative exnovation of the private automobile, it is important to bring together the different paradigms and vocabularies from both urban mobility studies and urban planning studies as well as their respective actors and specialists from other fields.