School design package for urban mobility

This proposal seeks to consolidate a design package that enable schools to boost permanent behavioral changes towards sustainable mobility

Long description

This proposal seeks to consolidate a design package that enable schools to boost permanent behavioral changes towards sustainable mobility, mostly based on experiences with public schools and on insights from participatory research approaches with children.

This design package consists of accessible guidebooks, community practices and supplementary tools that seek to enhance the capability of families and schools to walk, cycle and use public transportation, such as the engagement of the local community, the use of recyclable materials, educational activities suitable for preschool-age children, and other affordable strategies that are appropriate for São Paulo.

Since 2015, members of this proposal carry out a project that seeks the practice of thinking through walking with children, which has witnessed changes in the mobility habits of around 600 children and caregivers, especially regarding the capacity of families to occupy the urban territory and perform sustainable mobility in a permanent way. This project led to the development of an research in transportation that entails the pretest-posttest assessment of such interventions in selected schools, whose contexts are representative of the city of São Paulo. This preliminary research will be implemented in the first half of 2019.

In this sense, the group’s previous experience and the participatory research with children is supposed to inform the strengths and weaknesses that can guide a tailor-suited design package for preschools and to support public policy development in São Paulo towards sustainable mobility.