School Streets: Enhancing Neighborhoods in Paris & Barcelona • Guests: P. Benedetti • J. Honey-Rosés

Barcelona’s school streets program, Protegim les Escoles has transformed over 200 schools environments to make them greener, safer and healthier places for children, families and neighbours, through an investment of over €16 million. School streets programs aim to improve the quality of these public spaces through street re-designs, traffic calming measures, the removal of car parking and the addition of street furniture and vegetation. Few urban planning programs undergo rigorous impact assessments, and this research project aims to be one of the first to evaluate the impact of a street calming initiative. We evaluated the impact of a school streets program in Barcelona, Spain that implemented street calming measures in eight streets. Using a pre-post research design with comparable controls, we measure changes in the use of public space by gender and age as a result of the street closures and street calming measures. We use difference in difference regression to generate estimates of program impact. We find that the use of public space increases by over 134% in schools benefiting from the street calming measures with particularly dramatic improvements in streets with full closure. We see 4 times as many children playing and on average 11 more people staying in streets closed to vehicle traffic. Street calming designs reduced vehicle traffic by 35% while full closures reduced traffic by 90% (exceptions being motorcycles). We also are able to detect measurable improvements in air quality. Our results indicate that full street closures provide significantly greater improvements to use of public space than partial closures. In addition to quantifying the impact of this particular school street program, we also aim to illustrate how rigorous impact evaluation may be incorporated into the best practices of city management. Paris’ Rues aux Enfants initiative, launched in 2020, has been especially impactful. It has transformed over 200 streets into low-traffic areas, with 70 of them redesigned to better accommodate pedestrians and children. This innovative approach has garnered international attention, with cities from around the world seeking insights from the Mairie de Paris on how to replicate this model of urban development. Priscilla’s work continues to inspire new possibilities for creating more livable and inclusive urban spaces, placing Paris at the forefront of modern public space design. Jordi Honey-Rosés Jordi Honey-Rosés is the lead researcher of City Lab Barcelona at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). He is an environmental planner by training, specialized in urban impact evaluation. He has published widely on urban experiments and impact evaluation in leading international scientific journals and his teaching has been recognized with the prestigious University Killam Teaching Award from the University of British Columbia (UBC). Prior to joining ICTA-UAB, he was Associate Professor with tenure at the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia (2013-2021). He holds the appointment of Honorary Research Associate at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at UBC. He has university degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, the Harvard Kennedy School and earned his PhD in Regional Planning from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Priscilla Benedetti Priscilla Benedetti is a passionate urban planner with a deep commitment to transforming public spaces. She completed her studies at the École d'Urbanisme de Paris and through different classes in Copenhagen and Rome, where she studied innovative approaches to public space design. Since 2021, Priscilla has been working at the Mairie de Paris, where she has led two groundbreaking initiatives: Embellir votre quartier ("Beautify Your Neighborhood") and Rues aux enfants ("Streets for Children"). These projects have significantly reshaped how public spaces are planned and used in Paris, prioritizing pedestrian-friendly and community-oriented urban design. Barcelona’s school streets program, Protegim les Escoles has transformed over 200 schools environments to make them greener, safer and healthier places for children, families and neighbours, through an investment of over €16 million. School streets programs aim to improve the quality of these public spaces through street re-designs, traffic calming measures, the removal of car parking and the addition of street furniture and vegetation. Paris’ Rues aux Enfants initiative, launched in 2020, has been especially impactful. It has transformed over 200 streets into low-traffic areas, with 70 of them redesigned to better accommodate pedestrians and children. This innovative approach has garnered international attention, with cities from around the world seeking insights from the Mairie de Paris on how to replicate this model of urban development.