| Popis: |
Problem identification is a key phase in the Looper co-creation process. This phase seeks to engage residents of the area covered by the Living Labs in surfacing problems in the public realm and coming to understand those problems more deeply in order to address them. The Brussels Looper Living Lab is located in the municipality of Schaerbeek in the north of the Brussels Capital Region. This municipality has many issues regarding mobility and is therefore an interesting testing ground for the Looper co-creation methodology. VUB-MOBI partnered with citizen NGO BRAL to try to identify and address issues of concern in Schaerbeek. The problem identification for the second loop began in June 2019, with the explicit aim to focus on school streets to improve traffic safety near a school. Whereas in the first loop much time was spent on identifying the problem and organising participatory data collection moments, the second loop focused on the problems that could arise when implementing a traffic safety measure. The Schaerbeek municipality, where the living lab was located, has been encouraging the temporary closure of streets located in front of schools to allow students to get to and from school safely. Looper decided to collaborate with the municipality on these school streets for the second loop. Once a school expressed interest in the project, the aim of the problem identification turned towards smaller issues: how can we together identify and solve the problems that arise when implementing a school street? Schaerbeek municipality had already encountered issues when setting up school streets in the past, which is why they asked Looper to conduct research into school streets. For this second loop, VUB-MOBI and BRAL therefore joined an ongoing initiative from the municipality of Schaerbeek and Ecole 10, an elementary school located in the Grande Rue au Bois in Schaerbeek. Once the school street had been identified as the topic for the living lab, data was collected to understand the current mobility situation of the neighbourhood and to evaluate it once the school street has been implemented. Different types of data were collected to understand the involved parties’ concerns and interest in the school street. Objective data on traffic volumes and speeds were collected with professional equipment as well as by citizens who installed a Telraam – a small counting computer – behind their windows. To identify their perception of traffic safety, residents, parents, and pupils participated in surveys. Other stakeholders, such as the municipality and the regional mobility ministry, were interviewed. Overall, the second loop went smoother than the first, as there was a lot of support from both the municipality and the school itself for the implementation of the school street. |
