Planning Cities of Proximity: Urban planning scenarios for accessible and inclusive public spaces around secondary railway stations

The contemporary metropolitan city faces multiple environmental, social, and functional challenges related to climate change, population concentration, and car-oriented planning models. These issues are further amplified in suburban contexts, where public spaces are primarily intended for car use and reflect predominantly monofunctional land-use patterns. In this context, a renewed interest has emerged in the proximity dimension of cities through compact, mixed-use, and liveable neighbourhoods, where the pedestrian dimension takes on a central role as the most democratic form of movement. However, translating this concept into suburban metropolitan areas remains challenging, since proximity planning, if not integrated with sustainable transport modes capable of linking the local and metropolitan scale, may lead to the production of self-contained enclaves rather than proximity-based neighbourhoods integrated within a continuous metropolitan fabric, a challenge to which railway stations could contribute by helping to address. Within this debate, the doctoral research is conducted in the framework of the Italian National Centre for Sustainable Mobility (CNMS)—a project funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP)—which, among its several objectives, aims to promote a new model of mobility that is accessible and inclusive. The thesis aims to understand how to operationalise the City of Proximity concept in suburban metropolitan contexts. It therefore proposes an integrated reading of proximity-based models and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), conceived as complementary approaches whose intersection converges around secondary railway stations, and in which the pedestrian dimension is placed at the centre of the relationship between accessibility and the quality of public space. It does so through the development of an integrated assessment methodology centred on pedestrian accessibility and pedestrian space quality, and through the definition of planning scenarios to assess the potential impact of strategies and related actions around secondary railway stations to support and guide proximity-oriented planning interventions within these contexts. The methodology is based on a data model implemented through a GIS-based environment and developed through both spatial- and network-based assessments. The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and related Indices defined within the methodology are grounded in principles of accessibility, safety, security, inclusive design, and enjoyment and comfort, with the purpose of assessing the pedestrian dimension through a comprehensive and holistic lens. The methodology is tested in two Italian case studies representative of suburban contexts located around secondary railway stations in metropolitan areas, and allows reflections on both the proposed methodology and the relationship between pedestrian accessibility and space quality. The outcomes of the research are intended as transferable tools for pedestrian accessibility and space quality assessment, and scenario planning, to support local administrations, practitioners, and private stakeholders engaged in proximity-oriented urban planning and sustainable mobility strategies.