In 2020 EIT Urban Mobility conducted a survey across 16 European cities to understand and analyse mobility strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. This built the basis for a study on urban mobility strategies during COVID-19, written by our partners Bable, CARNET, CTAG, DTU, and UPC, with the support of Miljöstrategi AB.

The full report analyses the urban mobility strategies deployed by cities since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each chapter provides extensive insights on aspects such as sustainable urban mobility system requirements, the impact of the virus so far on urban mobility, the role of innovation in this context, and the economic impact on new mobility.

The short version of the report is part of EIT UM’s Urban Mobility Next series, that provides practitioners with exclusive content on cutting edge urban mobility issues. It focuses on the main outcomes of the study, based on the analysis of the survey results as well as on selected best practices.

EIT Urban Mobility organises a webinar on 23 March to present the results of this report and to give interested readers the opportunity to directly discuss findings with the authors. Click here to register!

FURNISH is organising an open call to select 4 teams throughout Europe which will digitally fabricate and deploy urban elements for the purpose of adapting temporary public spaces to meet the new challenges and opportunities presented by the COVID-19 crisis.

FURNISH aims to merge the challenge of gaining more public space through ‘tactical urbanism’, which can reconfigure a street to expand the area for pedestrians and leisure, with local digital manufacturing. The call is open to Fab Labs, research groups, designers or makers able to produce rapid solutions to the urgent spatial problems and opportunities posed by the novel coronavirus. Interested teams must submit their qualifications until 25 September, along with evidence of having sought a letter of support from an institution (e.g. municipality, cultural centre, university, etc.).

The objective is to develop the designs and prototypes in collaborative workshops featuring all the selected FURNISH teams. Therefore it is not necessary to have a design prepared to apply. Pilot installations will be installed and tested by December. Each selected team will receive € 10.000€ to fund the fabrication and implementation of their prototypes. All designs developed under the FURNISH project will be documented in an open-source format, enabling replication anywhere in the world.

This project is funded by EIT Urban Mobility, an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). EIT Urban Mobility acts to accelerate positive change on mobility to make urban spaces more liveable.