Theories and practices for reconciling transport, public space, and people – a review

Prioritising people and public spaces in urban transport infrastructure planning is crucial to achieving sustainable development. This paper examines the theories, principles and real-world practices in pursuing a human-centred and sustainable design of an integrated transport infrastructure–public space system. The paper chronologically reviews the origins of the concept for building such a holistic system within urban and transportation planning discourse and revisits a set of typical practices of applying the design theories to various urban contexts. The findings of this paper are presented in a timeline of multi-disciplinary theories, and in a table of development patterns of context-based solutions for reconciling transport, spaces and people. These results expand theoretical and practical knowledge of strategies for integrating transport, spaces and people in urban regeneration programmes. Furthermore, they could support practitioners and scholars to revisit existing urban projects and to develop sustainable transport plans prioritising the roles of people and public space.