Publications

Policy notes, academic publications and written resources

T-SUM Impact Summary & Reflection

October 2023

Authors: Clemence Cavoli, Daniel Oviedo, Yasmina Yusuf, Alexandria Chong, Joseph Macarthy, Braima Koroma, Joaquin Romero de Tejada and Constancio Machanguana

This document provides a brief overview of the research and policy impacts of the T-SUM project in the past five years.

Access the T-SUM Impact Summary and Reflection by clicking on the image.

Accessibility and sustainable mobility transitions in Africa: Insights from Freetown

July 2023

Authors: Daniel Oviedo, Clemence Cavoli, Caren Levy, Braima Koroma, Joseph Macarthy, Orlando Sabogal, Fatima Arroyo and Peter Jones

In the context of still-low-but-rising levels of motorization and economic growth, increasing social and spatial inequalities, and growing concerns about air pollution and climate change, the formulation and implementation of policies, practices and partnerships that can support an accelerated implementation of sustainable mobility policies is an urgent concern for rapidly developing cities. This paper seeks to contribute to reframing some of the knowledge and methodologies produced in and about cities of Sub-Saharan Africa, through a comprehensive assessment of mobility patterns and accessibility needs within a larger debate about mobility transitions and
sustainable development. By deploying a mixed-methods approach that builds upon case-study focus groups and city-wide accessibility and mobility analysis in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, the paper maps travel patterns and their links with structural factors such as urban form, poverty, informality and social identities at the macro, meso and micro levels. The paper also presents evidence from a variety of methods that illustrate the significance of accessibility-centred information and analysis for establishing policy priorities for improving urban mobility and accessibility in the local, African and global contexts.

Access the paper by clicking on the image.

Authors: Alexandria Chong, Shyantani Saha, Clemence Cavoli, Daniel Oviedo and Yasmina Yusuf

This document provides an overview of all the key terms and definitions used as part of the T-SUM project.

Access the T-SUM Lexicon by clicking on the image.

T-SUM Lexicon

July 2023

City Profile - Mobility, Accessibility and Land Use in the Maputo Metropolitan Area

July 2023

Authors: Joaquin Romero de Tejada, Anna Mazzolini, Constâncio Machanguana, António Matos, Géssica Macamo, Clemence Cavoli and Daniel Oviedo

This city profile contributes to this discussion by consolidating the available knowledge and data regarding Maputo’s urban trajectory, the urban transport system and the recent development of the transport sector. The report also highlights the data gaps that need to be addressed for a comprehensive understanding of the pathways of urban
mobility in Maputo and its metropolitan area.

Access the city profile by clicking on the image.

Actor-network analysis of community-based organisations in health pandemics:

Evidence from Covid-19 response in Freetown, Sierra Leone

September 2021

Authors: Louis Kusi Frimpong, Seth Asare Okyere, Stephen Kofi Diko, Matthew Abunyewah, Michael Odei Erdiaw-Kwasie, Tracy Sidney Commodore, Daniel Oviedo Hernandez, and Michihiro Kita

Based on a qualitative study in two informal settlements in Freetown, this paper draws on actor-network theory to understand how CBOs problematize Covid-19 as a health risk and interact with other actors and the tensions that arise within these actor networks. The study suggests that creating new channels for knowledge exchange and building on CBO capacity can help strengthen actor networks in communities and combat current and future health disasters.

Access the full article by clicking on the image on the left.

Authors: Daniel Oviedo, Seth Asare Okyere, Mariajosé Nieto, Michihiro Kita, Louis Frimpong Kusi, Yasmina Yusuf, Braima Koroma

Journal : Research in Transportation Business & Management

This paper presents preliminary results of a pilot study that examined the walking environment and everyday walking practices in an informal settlement in Freetown, Sierra Leone, using web-based mapping and a qualitative questionnaire. Through context-specific understandings of the everyday walking environment, the research provides avenues for urban transport and development planners to work with local actors to improve accessibility in informal urban neighbourhoods facing acute structural deficits for urban mobility and access to essential everyday services.

Access the paper by clicking on the image on the left.

This paper aims to identify recurrent governance and policy factors across sectors, as well as macro factors, that tend to contribute to car-dependent urban mobility systems in rapidly growing cities. It draws on qualitative and quantitative research findings from five Eastern European and Middle Eastern cities: Tallinn, Bucharest, Skopje, Adana and Amman.It investigates the extent to which some of these factors are preventable.

Access the paper by clicking on the image on the left.

T-SUM Report - Participatory Policy Planning

February 2021

This report summarises the approach and methodology for two participatory workshops, held in Freetown, Sierra Leone as part of the T-SUM project. It provides a detailed account of the preparatory and implementation processes and offers reflections on the practical experience of holding these workshops. The objective of this report is to provide one illustration of how to implement participatory policy processes in the mobility sector, in the context of rapidly growing Sub-Saharan African cities.

Access the report by clicking on the image on the left.

City Profile - Freetown: Base Conditions of Mobility, Accessibility and Land Use

February 2021

This city profile aims to provide an overview of Freetown’s urban development with a focus on the transport sector to support pathways to sustainable urban mobility in the long term. It is the first rigorous attempt at producing evidence-based knowledge for understanding the main drivers of current development trajectories and their influence on urban mobility, accessibility, social, and environmental issues in Freetown. The objective of the city profile is to contribute to discussions in local, national and global arenas by drawing on debates about mobility transitions and sustainable development. It focuses on describing the base conditions from which to examine trajectories towards more sustainable mobility.

Access the working paper by clicking on the image on the left.

Strategic vision for sustainable urban transport and mobility in Sierra Leone: Timeline of policy priorities

November 2020

This document summarises the consensus that emerged during the T-SUM workshop ‘Future Freetown, Improving Mobility – from Vision to Implementation’ that took place on March 4th 2020 in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The participatory workshop was led by SLURC and UCL, with the support of Freetown City Council, the Ministry of Transport and Aviation, the Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority, the Sierra Leone Roads Authority, the Sierra Leone Road Transport Cooperation, the Sierra Leone Institution of Engineer, Fourah Bay College and the Directorate of Science Technology and Innovation.

Circa 50 key stakeholders across sectors and representatives of the public participated.

Read the full report by clicking on the image.

Strategic vision for sustainable urban transport and mobility in Sierra Leone:

Practical implementation constraints and opportunities

October 2020

Circa 50 key stakeholders across sectors and representatives of the public participated.

Read the full report by clicking on the image.

Strategic vision for sustainable urban transport and mobility in Sierra Leone: Lessons and insights from Freetown

June 2020

This document summarises the consensus that emerged during the T-SUM workshop ‘Future Freetown, a Vision to Improve Mobility’ that took place on December 3rd and 4th 2019 in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The workshop was led by SLURC and UCL, with the support of Freetown City Council, the Ministry of Transport and Aviation, the Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority, the Sierra Leone Roads Authority, the Sierra Leone Road Transport Cooperation, the Sierra Leone Institute of Engineer, Fourah Bay College and the Directorate of Science Technology and Innovation.

Circa 50 key stakeholders across sectors and representatives of the public participated.

Read the full report by clicking on the image.

Student Outputs

T-SUM Report - Accelerating sustainable mobility and land-use transitions in rapidly growing cities

March 2021

Walking off the beaten path: Everyday walking environment and practices in informal settlements in Freetown

March 2021

Analysis of Sierra Leone’s Medium-Term Development Plan (MTNDP): Challenges & Opportunities Ahead of the Tourism Sector

Policy Brief - January, 2022

This dissertation is written by Antoine B. Kallab, MSc Urban Economic Development,

from the Development Planning Unit (UCL), supervised by Dr. Daniel Oviedo Hernandez.

This policy brief is extracted from a graduate dissertation submitted in October 2020 as part of the MSc. Urban Economic Development program at the University College London (UCL). It was conceived in the context of a fellowship agreement between the Development Planning Unit (DPU) - UCL and the Sierra Leone Urban Research Center (SLURC) in collaboration with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Planning and Economic Development (MOPED) and the National Tourism Board (NTB).

Access the policy brief (left) and the dissertation (right) by clicking on the PDF icon below.

Dense, Diverse, and Sustainable: Exploring Future Pathways for the Adoption of Transit-Oriented Development in Maputo

September, 2020

This dissertation is written by Juan Omar Corona Barrera, MSc Building and Urban Design for Development, from the Development Planning Unit (UCL), supervised by Dr. Daniel Oviedo Hernandez.

This dissertation explores the planning framework of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) within the context of the African city of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. It attempts to identify future pathways to achieving sustainable urban development through transport equity. The research looks at ethical theories of justice and introduces the notion of just practices to evaluate the outcomes of TOD. To identify the trends that define current land-use policy and urban planning practices, the research follows the urban trajectory of Maputo, from the colonial period up until today. In conclusion, this dissertation also argues that even when there are presently several challenges preventing the possible adoption of TOD as a planning alternative for Greater Maputo, a context-specific version of TOD holds great potential as a strategy to promote sustainable urban development and stimulate the transition to equitable transport systems.

Access the dissertation by clicking on the PDF icon below.

STeAPP Project: Transitions to Sustainable Urban Mobility in Sub-Saharan Africa

August, 2019

This research article was a part of the STeAPP project, co-written by Enping Dong Nicole Kugelmass Holender Mario Reyes Saldias María Ricalde Cural and supervised by Dr. Ellie Cosgrave and Dr Joanna Chataway.

STeAPP’s involvement in the project was to support in the development and implementation of two focus areas: 1. Identifying some of the key factors that enable transitions to Sustainable Urban Mobility and build case studies of comparable cities that have exhibited good-practice approaches to SUM transitions. 2. Analysing best practices in participatory governance, processes and workshop design with the goal of providing a guideline that will be used as a manual for this project. The first part of the analysis was based on the theory of “socio-technical transitions” (Geels, 2007), which is used to explain the challenges and processes involved in pursuing a successful transition towards a sustainable urban mobility pathway. The second section of the analysis is focused on the factors enabling transitions to SUM. The third section consists of participatory governance and how participatory processes can enable transitions towards a Sustainable Socio-Technical Regime, by prioritising actions and practical steps to implement. The last section of the analysis integrates how for Maputo and Freetown to transition from their current Socio-Technical Regime to a SUM-based one.

Access the policy brief by clicking on the PDF icon below.

This dissertation is written by Almos Tivadar Papp, MSc Building and Urban Design in Development Development Planning Unit (UCL), and supervised by Dr. Daniel Oviedo Hernandez.

This dissertation addresses the lack of accessibility and its role in achieving a transition to a more sustainable urban mobility in the Global South; the research for this study is based on the case study of Freetown, Sierra Leone. The work’s aim is to propose a framework for an advanced transition to a more sustainable urban mobility in which analysing the challenges to this transition identified locally is performed through the lens of accessibility. This framework is also intended to be applied to other cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, which face similar challenges.