Similar to Living Streets, Berlin’s Kiezblocks are an initiative to limit traffic, improve road safety, and improve air quality at the neighbourhood level. However, they aim to establish both permanent and temporary spaces. They use participatory urban planning processes to divert traffic and plan, propose, and implement bike lanes and other communal spaces. They can be implemented by citizens, civil-society organizations, or governments.
Title
Brief description
Berlin’s Kiezblocks are a Changing Cities campaign to free residential areas from motorised traffic. The issue was that Berlin has many initiatives fighting for low traffic neighbourhoods but they are quite siloed and isolated from one another. Berlin’s Kiezblocks uses citizen petition to bring residents together to promote cleaner and quieter residential areas.
Keywords
low-traffic, neighbourhood, air quality, shared spaces, bike lanes
City/Country
Time period
2021- ongoing
Lever(s)
Policy, regulation & governance
Culture, civic participation & social innovation
Methodologies
Citizen petition- Citizen can present policy proposals to their local parliament through citizen petition (as the citizens are not usually members of the local parliament). Each petition has to garner at least a 1000 signatures for it to be registered n the borough. Then the petition can be approved/rejected-
World Region
Scale(s) of the case analysed
Target audience and dimension
Domain(s) of application
Context addressed
Solution applied
Challenge addressed/ Problem-led approach
Barriers addressed
Main Practices
Impact
Co benefits
Engagement Journey
Impact to climate neutrality
Reduce traffic.
Context & Public policy of reference
Innovative approach(es) addressed
Reduce or limit motorized traffic in residential areas. Each neighbourhood of a city would implement its own Kiezblock — this would mean entire residential areas would be limited to motorized traffic within a city. Roads would be used to open more bike lanes or build communal spaces like playgrounds.
Initiator
Kiezblocks have been implemented by citizens, neighborhood’s management boards, and local governments.
Stakeholder networks and organisational model
Stakeholders:
Changing Cities- Support districts to become traffic calming spots
Citizens- Take the initiative themselves. Make petitions to the local parliament
Local parliament- Approve/reject petitions, policy resolutions
Civil society organisations
Network, communication and governance:
1. As there are many reduced traffic initaitives going on in Berlin, Changing Cities contacts these different initiatives and helps them hold events on the streets and social media.
2. Citizens can present policy proposals to their local parliament in the form of a citizen petition.
a. Each petition should collect at least 1000 valid signatures from supporters in the borough so that the petition can be sent to the local parliament, which can then be approved/rejected.
2. Then, policy resolutions are made by members of the local parliament.
3. There is also an administrative process made by the roads and parks authority that do :
a. Evaluation of traffic
b. A plan for implementation with concrete measures
c. Participatory strategies with in-person participation, online questionnaire and representative survey
d. An implementation stage
e. Continuous evaluation of changes in traffic flow
Communicate: Through social media, emails, and events to connect everyone to each other
Democratic Purpose
Participant Recruitment
nteraction between participants
Resources
Key enablers
Key inhibiting factors
Drawbacks/pros/cons of the solutions (after implementation)
Pros:
1. Suggestions made by civil society on reversible traffic diverting measures are considered by the project. They can coordinate with public administration to reshape public spaces.
--> When a citizen’s petition garners enough votes, a politician has to respond.
--> Citizens are the ones who take the initiative (citizen petition).
Scalability
Key lessons
Indicators
External link
Blechinger, P., Soomauroo, Z., Al-Battat, M., & Wallmüller, P. (n.d.). Concepts for Sustainable Urban mobility. Bottom-Up Approaches and Case Studies. Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Retrieved from https://reiner-lemoine-institut.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/AGYA_Factsheet/index.html#1
von Schneidemesser, D., & Kirby, N. (2022, February 10). Reshaping the city – a top-down or a bottom-up process? Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies. Retrieved from
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