Resulting from a call for commons launched in 2021 by the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe), this guide of more than 400 pages, available on the website of "La rue commune" (www.ruecommune.com), brings together technical and methodological solutions for elected officials, urban planners and citizens.
It is also the result of a citizen consultation which collected nearly 800 proposals.
"The street is an essential link in the fabric of the city, we have an incredible scope of intervention to adapt our cities to the climate challenge. Nearly 80% of current buildings will be present in 2050, so they must be adapted to the conditions of tomorrow and this is also true of public spaces", declared Franck Boutté, engineer and architect, during a press conference.
According to this guide, "common streets" are "flat streets, without sidewalks or separation between urban functions", where the car can no longer park but only circulate at the speed of a pedestrian, i.e. 5 km / h.
It is a question of accompanying the "demotorization" of cities, namely the reduction of the number of cars per household, to "liberate the ordinary space of the streets from the grip of the car".
"Thus liberated and peaceful, the common street necessarily re-examines the developments born from the reign of the automobile", write the authors. These new streets will therefore be able to accommodate uses other than mobility and which will be likely to evolve "to the rhythm of the day, the week and the seasons".
To be eligible, these streets must not be structuring axes, but secondary axes without a bus line, and must be located 10 minutes on foot from public transport.
They may be located both in city centers and in the suburbs and must be subject to work by the town hall.
Among the developments proposed, soil dewatering and greening in a logic of "urban refreshment" come first. A step-by-step methodology, with experimentation phases, is also proposed.
"It's a gradual approach. We are not going to remove 50 years of monopolization of our cities by the car overnight", recognized Vincent Cottet, urban planner at Richez Associés.