How Does Mobility Occupy Urban Areas? Analyzing Slow and Fast Areas in a Milan Neighborhood

Mobility plays a relevant role in the occupation of public areas, considering the space for both the movement (e.g. bicycle lanes, sidewalks) and the stop (e.g. car parking, squares, bike racks). As motorized or non-motorized mobility produce completely different quality and use of space, we introduce a distinction between urban public space occupied by active and fast mobility, here defined as “slow” and “fast” areas. The paper presents an analysis of slow and fast areas in a neighborhood in Milan, to investigate the spatial distribution of public space through the lens of mobility. This represents an original analytic framework which provides a better understanding of how space is shared in everyday urban life in terms of mobility between people and vehicles, by considering how this distribution affects urban livability and accessibility. Such a practical and operational approach, replicable and applicable to many different urban contexts, is quite unusual in similar research (mixed between urban planning and mobility fields), where the specific case-study analysis is more familiar. The findings contribute to strategies that reclaim space from fast mobility and prioritize slow mobility for urban design.