Streets4All was born due to the reason that urban space is scarce and transport facilities use a significant amount for roads, parking, and other uses. Also, this space has been inequitably preferring motorized modes, in particular cars. Today, many cities target the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by favoring people-centric planning after decades of car-centered planning.

Besides, urban street space is often idling. Congested streets and avenues during peak hours are underutilized in off-peak hours. On-street parking in residential areas is scarce overnight but idling during the day when residents leave to work. Based on that, planners could reallocate unused street space for other transport modes (e.g., bus or cycling lanes) or urban functions (e.g., markets, promenades), equitably. Such approaches exist today, e.g., nighttime parking or on-street weekend markets. However, they are local and static. They follow a fixed rule or they are temporary like tactical urbanism, e.g., pop-up cycle lanes. Overall, they are not demand- responsive and do not adapt to changing requirements of accessibility or mobility.

Moreover, Streets4All, a project funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), proposes an Equitable and Dynamic Allocation of Urban Street Space to accommodate the future multi-modal and multi-functional street uses. Street design solutions that can be adapted for all modes over time, during predetermined time lengths (e.g., an hour, few hours, or days) and at pre-timed periods (e.g., peak or off-peak hour, day or night time) will be studied.

The research team is composed of 11 members, with divergent backgrounds in Engineering, Urbanism, and Territory. Also, the project is an association between the University of Lisbon – Instituto Superior Técnico – represented by its research centers: Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability (CERIS), Center for Innovation in Territory, Urbanism and Architecture (CiTUA), and the Laboratory for Robotics and Engineering Systems (LARSyS). The University of Coimbra is involved and represented by The Research Center for Territory, Transports, and Environment (CITTA). The main partners are The Municipality of Lisbon, Siemens and The research group Machine Learning for Smart Mobility (MLSM) at the Technical University of Denmark.

During the period of the project, there will be events such as workshops and seminars presenting the major outputs and discussing the next steps with divergent stakeholders such as public institutions, technicians, operators, industry, citizens, and residents’ associations.