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

Giovanni Vecchio,Riccardo Porreca,Daniela Jácome Rivera

doi:10.3390/su12072923

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.

Highlights

Transport systems generate several socio-spatial consequences, which urban research and policy are increasingly considering
We propose to examine to what extent socio-spatial concerns influence and are influenced by urban mobility policy decisions that involve alternative transport options
While other cities in Latin America deployed urban mobility policies that explicitly intended to generate certain socio-spatial impacts, we argue that, in Quito, socio-spatial concerns had a limited impact on the mobility planning strategies of the city—some issues were explicitly considered in planning strategies; Sustainability 2020, 12, 2923 others were mentioned but not assessed, reducing the effectiveness of the deployed measures; and others were not considered, generating unintended consequences for the transport system of Quito and the city as a whole

Summary

Introduction

Transport systems generate several socio-spatial consequences, which urban research and policy are increasingly considering. In the last few decades, various policymakers have promoted transport-based strategies for tackling socioeconomic inequalities, enhancing social inclusion, and fostering urban regeneration; famous examples in this sense are the Colombian cities of Bogotá and Medellin, which have inspired several cities across the world [18,19]. These are just two influential cases that different international agencies have started promoting as best practices for urban mobility in metropolises of developing countries [20,21,22]

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Conclusion