STREET-15
School-Driven Transformation for Resilient, Engaged and Equitable Youth-Centric 15-minute Neighbourhoods
- Category
- Project
- Call
- DUT Call 2024
- Duration
- –
- Project coordinator
- University of Naples Federico II
STREET-15 tackles the urgent need for safer, more inclusive urban mobility by focusing on school streets, car-free zones around schools that reduce traffic, pollution, and safety risks. While these initiatives are growing across Europe, most remain temporary, isolated, and disconnected from long-term urban planning. Children and youth - their primary users - are rarely involved in their design. STREET-15 reframes school streets as urban street experiments, not just safety measures, but living labs that test new ways of making cities more liveable. The project introduces intergenerational, participatory planning, actively involving children aged 5–18 and their families as co-creators of change. It also addresses the lack of scale by developing strategies to connect school streets to wider mobility networks and neighborhoods transformation. Ultimately, the project responds to the challenge of turning small, child-centred interventions into systemic tools for building inclusive, resilient, and youth-friendly 15-minute neighborhoods.
STREET-15 will develop and test new models for school streets by working directly with children, families, and local authorities in three cities: Naples (Italy), London (UK), and Bergen (Norway). These cities will serve as Living Labs to co-design, implement, and evaluate school street interventions that are inclusive, youth-led, and part of long-term mobility strategies. The project combines participatory planning, arts-based engagement, and spatial analysis to understand what works and why. It will produce practical tools including a School Streets Atlas, participatory design toolkit, and impact assessment framework.
STREET-15 will also explore how school streets can be scaled and integrated into wider plans like climate strategies, Vision Zero, and Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). By embedding these interventions into everyday urban systems, the project moves beyond one-off pilots to support lasting, city-wide transformation led by and for young people.
STREET-15 will generate practical knowledge, tools, and policy insights to help cities design and scale inclusive, youth-focused school street interventions. The project will deliver real-world pilots in Naples, London, and Bergen, showing how school streets can support safer mobility, cleaner air, and stronger social ties. It will create an open-access School Streets Atlas, co-design toolkits, and a flexible impact assessment framework that cities across Europe can adapt. By centering the experiences and ideas of children and young people, the project will also promote more democratic and participatory planning processes. In the long term, STREET-15 aims to help shift urban mobility cultures, reduce car dependency, and embed school streets into city-wide strategies like climate action plans and 15-minute
neighbourhoods. The result: healthier, fairer, and more liveable cities designed with and for the next generation.
Belgium
Italy
Norway
United Kingdom
Comune di Napoli, Høgskulen på Vestlandet, Systemica SRL, University of Westminster, Westminster City Council
Aps Napoli Pedala, Associazione Quartieri Spagnoli Onlus, Fondazione Pietro Giacomo Rusconi, Villa Ghigi, per l'Innovazione Urbana, Fridalen skole, Gewestelijke Overheidsdienst Brussel, nternational Federation of Pedestrians - Research, Koos Fransen, Legambiente Nazionale A.p.s. Rete Associativa E.t.s., London Borough of Lambeth, London School of Economics and Political Science, Mums for Lungs, Slettebakken skole, Solve the School Run CIO, Urban@it Centro nazionale di studi per le politiche urbane, walk.brussels asbl
Contact
Daniela De Leo
deleo@unina.it
Enrica Papa
E.Papa@westminster.ac.uk
Wendy Guan Zhen Tan
wendy.guan.zhen.tan@hvl.no