A Preliminary Analysis on Parklets: Can They Contribute to the Realisation of a Walking Friendly City in Italy?

The most current city models banish the concept of a car-oriented city by promoting a series of actions and strategies that allow users to choose more sustainable solutions aimed at walking and cycling, and contemporarily promoting the concept of proximity city. In recent years, parklets have played a crucial role among the different strategies found in the literature to reach this goal. Parklets are built on equipped public areas used for parking cars and can also be an extension of the sidewalk. In this way, they become meeting places where you can stop drinking, eating, or relaxing. The present work focuses on a review of European and non-European literature on the implementation of parklets and the estimation of SWOT analysis in various contexts, emphasising the purpose of these interventions and considering the peculiarities of Italian urban areas where parklets have already been built or where they could be in the coming months. An analysis of the literature on mathematical modelling for vehicular traffic is also included, to enrich the paper with a rigorous description of the vehicle and pedestrian interactions in a street and to predict the impact of the actions of urban planning by evaluating the most suitable way to model the phenomena arising from the previously discussed urban interventions. These results can serve as a basis for local administrators to improve strategic planning and sustainable mobility in Italian cities.