Sustainability charter for innovative cities and safe mobility. Case study: Sestri Levante

In order to make our cities more innovative and responsive, the paper reports a study aimed at defining a new sustainability tool, in the context of Agenda 2030, to be adopted in urban realities. It has to do with the 'Sustainability Charter', a city decision-making process, designed with researchers, local communities and companies. The research analyses the Sustainability Charter and develops a methodological approach aiming at the systemization of all sustainable actions related to different urban topics. In particular, indicators were identified to assess the sustainability of these topics, graphically represented by chart and defined as sustainability maps. In the paper, among the priority issues at urban level, sustainable mobility is explored. The current health emergency has highlighted all the problems related to urban mobility. This situation can represent an opportunity to improve, revise or update cities’ governance tools. It is necessary to build safe soft mobility infrastructures, and to reorganize the existing ones -redesigning urban space-, by promoting a new culture of sustainable mobility. The Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP), should integrate the Urban Sustainability Charter and all the underlying strategies to promote sustainable mobility.