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City mobilities at night
Facilitating movement for people who work and travel at night
 With the “City at Night” programme, IVM is embarking on a genuine futurology of the city
Troll Experiments
A night in Paris… Genesis of a programme
Noctambulle, test-run in Belfort
With the “City at Night” programme, IVM is embarking on
a genuine futurology of the city
The city lives to an alternating rhythm of day and night. Gradually, however, human activities are becoming freed of natural constraints – day, night, seasons … This deployment of time in urban life requires access to permanent mobility, for which our organisations are ill prepared.
Local experiments and innovations have emerged to meet these new needs for nocturnal mobility. However, no international inventory has so far been made of these new opportunities, these good practices and experiments, and there has been no analysis of the new needs for night-time mobility. Only a few studies and a handful of contacts with different groups suggest the scope of the phenomenon.
The City on the Move Institute intends to analyse how cities manage their night mobilities and to initiate useful experiments.. More broadly, the study of mobilities and of the urban night opens up a whole futurology of the city..
The task is organised around three principal axes:
 An international inventory of nocturnal mobilities;
Raising awareness and networking the stakeholders;
Experiments.
Troll experiment
One of the concepts that emerged from one of the night project teams is Troll. This concept involves sowing the night streets of the city with a family of “trolls”, individual or collective mobile units with the capacity to instigate poetry, a mind-shift, and to attract the public towards other places, forgotten events, marginal urban spaces (suburbs, temporary places …). It also means… creating, prompting ephemeral communities, confronting the different faces of the city; stimulating encounters and appropriating territory when it is at its most open, least boundaried, when people wish to reclaim it. Above all, though, it is a state of mind, a brand, a working label initiated by the IVM.
The new urban timelines, changes in lifestyle, are generating new nocturnal mobilities which for the moment are often difficult and disorganised. Identifying and examining the themes and problems specific to night in the city is a way of bringing forward solutions but also of anticipating urban transformations in general and in particular the specific problems of mobility – both spatial and temporal – in low-density urban areas. The strategy chosen by IVM is to work with AWP to develop an urbanistic and artistic approach: this project of research and experiment on nocturnal mobility systems, on urban design, on temporary signage, is international in scale, bringing together corporate, institutional, political and creative contributors. Experimental events have been organised on nocturnal mobility, which are brought out new dimensions of the urban night.
Seminars and workshops have been run in 2005 in Helsinki, Barcelona and Toronto, followed by nocturnal itineraries in partnership with the French cultural institutes, design and architecture schools, and the host cities. For each city, an A-Z of nocturnal mobilities is produced with a set of proposals for the future.
To find out more
To find out more about the Troll experiments: : http://trollawp.free.fr/
To find out more about Troll Toronto : http://torontotroll.ca/
To find out more about Helsinki Troll
To find out more about Barcelona Troll
International inventory of nocturnal mobilities
The international inventory of nocturnal mobilities is initially based on two surveys. A first survey is being conducted with some twenty European cities.
To start with, a questionnaire was sent to each group of local partners (local authority, public transport provider, university, association) between September and October 2003. In situ meetings have been organised between IVM and the territorial stakeholders to help analyse the new services and attempt an initial evaluation.
A second survey is set to be conducted with the population, in collaboration with local partners (universities, associations)..
Raising awareness and networking the stakeholders
With the city of Rome, IVM organised a European Forum on nocturnal mobilities in Rome from 23 to 25 April 2004. Its aims were multiple:
To  carry out an initial inventory of good nocturnal mobility practices, experiments and new population needs;
To facilitate exchange between the different partners and stakeholders in mobilities: associations, transport providers, local authorities, universities;
To raise awareness about this work among different territories, companies or organisations, to bring this issue of nocturnal mobilities onto the European agenda and to start a wide ranging debate;
More broadly, to raise the question of the growth of nocturnal activities, of the emergence of a 24/24 city within a context of sustainable development, and to devise new ways of articulating the different districts where the city sleeps, where it is on the move, where it is at work and being supplied, and where it is at play.
Download the programme
A night in Paris… Genesis of the "City at night" programme
In February 2002, the City on the Move Institute sent representatives from all horizons into Paris and its region to compare impressions. A geographer, architect, night nurse, police commander, cultural organiser, industrialist, musician, film director, local politician, designer, social mediator and shopkeeper set off for a night journey across Paris and its region
Their mission: To study the values and representations mediated by the night along four routes (East/West; North/South; North/Northeast; South/Southeast) and then to come up with original solutions for facilitating night-time mobilities.. The aim, therefore, was to penetrate the city’s forgotten dimension, to conduct an unbiased and undirected exploration of the city, but following a precise method: first to observe and note everything we saw, however ordinary. Then, to imagine and dream the city freely as we would like it to be.. And finally, to create and put together all the ideas that emerged from that night.. The process culminated in brainstorming sessions, notably resulting in the definition of an original method which has already been applied in other cities and territories:
Nancy in November 2003 (DATAR Times and Territories programme)
Paris in October 2003 (European EQUAL programme)..
A first partnership with the radio station “Le Mouv” was also launched with two live radio programmes on the city at night: a special programme on the approach to the night during the Paris white nights and a journey through Sarajevo.
European partners interested in this question and in creating a database were identified.. The “City at Night” programme emerged
To find out more, download the 2002 journey through Paris programme and the presentation of the journey (3,2mo)
Noctambulle, test-run in Belfort
Another idea that stood out from the different concepts generated by the night journeys was Noctambulle. It proposes a biodegradable shared transport service servicing the cultural events and entertainments of the Parisian night. The quality of nocturnal public transport is thereby improved both inside the Noctanbulle by means of a reception service, entertainments, Internet terminals … and also outside through an interface between the different parts of the city. Of course, the Noctambulle can be adapted to reflect the Troll approach.
A preliminary test has already been organised in the “Kiosk Night” operation on 8 October 2003, a sequence of parties designed for 5000 students in the Belfort Montbéliard Urban Area, which is awaiting evaluation.
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