Perceptions of Urban Change: Exploring Before-and-After Visual Preferences for Mobility

07/07/2025

Urban spaces are changing in response to the current paradigm shift in mobility planning, where the focus moves away from private cars to sustainable modes, along with a shift in the decision-making process from an expert-based and politician-driven model to one that integrates citizens' preferences and expectations. Considering this, a deeper understanding of citizens’ attitudes and perceptions, and their driving factors, toward the different mobility reconfigurations is fundamental to better inform urban transitions. Current research only targets local citizens and specific road users, relying on resource-intensive design scenarios and time-consuming experiments, rarely considering the element of change. This study developed an innovative, scalable, gamified, and universally applicable visual preference survey to capture preferences toward urban interventions focused on the main mobility cultures (transit-, car-, and active-modes-oriented), across diverse population groups. The survey displayed image pairs (before and after) from real urban interventions, using Google Street View “Time-Machine” tool for a panoramic and interactive visual representation, wherein the respondent chose their preferred scenario while describing their decision by grading perceptual factors (comfort, order, security, safety, livability, stress and usefulness). Responses regarding car-oriented interventions were the least accepted. However, parents and non-experts were significantly more supportive of these interventions than childless participants and experts, respectively. These group effects were not mirrored in active-oriented interventions, which had a near-unanimous acceptance. Transit-oriented interventions had a comparatively moderate acceptance. Globally, participants residing in suburban areas widely accepted all transitions. These results highlight the importance of meaningful consultation and tailored communication strategies to target such groups.

Authors in the community:

• 

  M

  Maria Inês Duarte Lopes

  ist193299

Supervisors of this institution:

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  F

  Filipe Manuel Mercier Vilaça e Moura

  ist14188

• 

  G

  Gabriel Costa Valença

  ist194281

other-engineering-and-technologies - Other engineering and technologies

eng - English

Instituto Superior Técnico