Welcome to the UNLOCK15-Toolbox - we are collecting tools to empower „agents of change“ from civil society as well as city officials to unlock existing lock-ins. We hope you will find some relevant tools to drive change towards mobility transition in your context!
From experience, three types of tools are need for real change: tools to create and communicate evidence, tools to envision possible futures and scenarios and participatory tools for on-site action.
Joint Survey between initiatives and district politics
A joint survey between district politics and initiatives has potential to drive change. A survey means to ask inhabitants of an area what they like or don't like about status quo and what they want to change. The initiative has local knowledge of the area and knows what is important to ask. The survey results give politicans guidance what kind of change is backed up by the inhabitants. From our experience a joint survey is possible when
- all involved people are amicable towards each other
- there is a third neutral party (for example science project or neighbourhood management) that coordinates the process
Collecting data about parking occupancy
Opponents of street transformation often claim, that there are to little parking possibilities. But is that true? Evidence in Ljubljana showed that the city has rather a problem with how parking space is unevenly occupied. The urban design studio prostorož suggested the following steps to collect data about parking space occupancy.
- define the area of observation (street / block / neighbourhood)
- prepare the site plan of all the parking spots you will observe / have access to, regardless of ownership
- set a hypothesis (e.g. parking is occupied by employees, not generating income for local shops)
- create an observation plan: check occupancy one Wednesday and Saturday; and granular occupancy of observed parking lots every 2 hours, starting from 5 AM to 12:00 PM
- graphically present data and interpret results
Measuring the speed of public transport
We can’t reduce the speed limit on this road because the busses would loose time!“ This or similar arguments may come up in discussions about street transformations. Maybe with your local knowledge you think: „Because of the frequent stops, the local busses don’t go beyond 30 km/h anyways.“ In those situations, it can help to bring evidence for your argument into the discussion. For example by measuring the speed of busses. Think in advance how to make your data collection as valid as possible within your ressources. To produce solid evidence about the speed of public transport we suggest the following steps:
- Make a plan how you will collect your data: What do you want to measure (one busline in both directions between bus stop X and Y), when (on peak/off peak, which days) and how often (how many times per day)
- Install an App that collects GPX-Tracks (data that links speed with location)
- Ride the busses according to your data collection plan
- Find someone who knows how to use QGIS (open source program for making maps) and install the plug-in for GPX Segment importer (https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/GpxSegmentImporter/#plugin-about)
- If everything works out the result should be maps like the ones you see here.
- Think about how you want to communicate the data: In a confidential setting or rather to a bigger audience?
Developing a convincing story for your campaign
Getting to the core of human behaviour
Public Engagement Onion
The Public Engagement Onion is a visual framework originally developed by the Wellcome Trust that maps the different levels and forms of public engagement — from broad, one-directional communication to deep, two-way collaboration.
Like the layers of an onion, the model moves from the outside in: the outer layers represent activities such as broadcasting information or raising awareness, where the engagement is relatively wide-reaching but shallow. Moving toward the center, activities become more interactive and participatory, culminating in shared decision-making and co-creation at the core.