The situation over the COVID-19 pandemic has affected and continues to affect the mobility of the population in several countries. Traditional approaches in transport planning have had to be replaced by new methods using digital technologies and e-planning methods. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the opportunity to use such a situation to enhance feedback from the citizen's perspective. This chapter describes the approach of population involvement through e-planning in the field of sustainable mobility. The case study itself is made based on data from the town of Banská Bystrica, where the process of preparing the strategic document Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan began last year. It can be stated that perhaps also thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the population was involved to a much greater extent than in other periods.
TopIntroduction
Unlike in the past, when transport planning was carried out mainly from the table without public participation, the current trend involves the public in all planning phases. The traditional planning approach represents so-called centralised planning, where the responsible institution or authority decides to act often without discussion with the citizens. If this occurs, the citizens demand changes and hear their voices. The evidence provided various examples (Polletta, 2016) when the citizens' participation took place even in the natural form (public protests, official letters, etc.) as well as the official promotion for acting at the local level, e. g Local Agenda 21 (Coenen, 2009). Citizens engagement is a highly recommended method in participatory budgeting on various other issues. For instance, participation in policy planning has a long tradition (Reed, J. et al., 2006). But in some way, it was just a formal process without further improvement. Although the public could formally participate in the past, not all residents had the opportunity to participate. This was mainly due to a different form of commenting when the notice of the construction or planned measures was hung only on the notice board of the competent authority. Although several cities have to inform their citizens about planned activities, the approaches vary from city to city. Sometimes only active citizens are searching for the information and take the responsibility to comment on the city actions in various areas as planning, financing, public budget spending, etc.
However, the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) has a different approach. The SUMP consists of various steps1 (Eltis). As part of its preparation, individual activities are divided into several events, where public participation is required. Of course, even in this case, this can only be done informally, with information being communicated and residents expected to get involved. Alternatively, proactive communication can be implemented, meaning that knowledge and information are actively disseminated to the public to collect feedback. Increasingly, citizen engagement is used more frequently due to the digital era and information and communication technologies (ICT). Citizens could instantly see what is going on, watch the streaming, read the legislation or see the planning activities. Some citizens prefer to engage in every potential problem solving; others prefer to stay outside the planning process or not participate. We can say that no one foresaw and set up involving the population in sustainable mobility planning. The recommended process considers the common condition without any limits. There are various excellent and inspiring examples of citizens engagement during the development of SUMP (e.g. Brussel Mobility; Bremen transport plan). However, the COVID pandemic reversed most of these processes. Traditional approaches could not be used, and therefore the methods available in terms of minimal risk to the population were used. Thus, the planning process moved to a digital environment that allowed certain people to be involved in the mobility planning process.
The study presented in this chapter aims to address the following research questions:
RQ1 - Is the pandemic a reason for a higher engagement of citizens in urban planning?
RQ2 - Does the digital platform make the process of citizens engagement easier in comparison to traditional participation tools?
The chapter is organised as follows. Sections 2 and 3 present the context of mobility planning, emphasising citizen engagement and engagement tools. Section 4 elaborates the topic of the Covid 19 pandemic and its effect on the ongoing planning process. The methodology followed in this study is described in section 5. The case study is presented in section 6.