A Literature Review on Street Experiments: A Preliminary Step Towards Adaptive Planned Solutions from Bottom-Up Experiments

From the first parklet established in 2005 in San Francisco by Rebar, an art-design-activist organisation, to the latest urban experimentations launched during the Covid-19 pandemic, street experiments are an established trend in the tactical urbanism. During these experimentations, city streets become key spaces not only for testing alternative form of transportation, integrating various urban activities, such as commerce, recreation, social interaction, and leisure, but also for suggesting innovative models for environmentally friendly public spaces. These reversible and temporary practices often originate from a bottom-up approach and seek to raise public awareness about current and widely debated issues such as sustainable and active mobility, as well as improving quality of life. The increasing understanding of their beneficial impacts is supported by numerous research and studies proposed by the scientific community. However, cutting-edge framework for street experiments has not been developed. This paper is part of an ongoing research and it seeks to address this gap through a systematic and critical literature review. In particular, the research examines the potential of street experiments, specifically parklets, with the aim of proposing operative process able to change these temporary experimentations in adaptive planned solutions, to transform and enhance the urban landscape sustainably, to promote active mobility, and enhance accessibility.