Transforming Streets into Public Spaces Using Menged Le Sew as a Driver

Abstract

Addis Ababa, the traffic-choked capital of Ethiopia with an ever-growing population, faces an urban crisis regarding road safety and mobility in recent years. To tackle these challenges, the government of Ethiopia and collaborative stakeholders launched a movement called Menged Le Sew (Streets for People), which takes place once a month since December 2018 in Addis Ababa and a few other cities in Ethiopia. The government's strategy to restrict cars once a month gives people an opportunity to reclaim public spaces. Residents of the cities use the open streets for different activities such as, participating in various sports, exercising, health campaigns, active mobility, and serving as a playground for children. To further promote the campaign nationwide and increase its longevity and aimed at serving as a guidebook for stakeholders organizing similar Menged Le Sew events, a toolkit was recently developed and launched by the Addis Ababa Traffic Management Agency and the World Resources Institute, Africa. However, the complexity of urban mobility, rising urbanization, and cross-sectoral interdependence necessitate a management strategy that blends new forms of governance and cooperation while emphasizing public participation to find and execute strategies to promote systemic change. Even though the movement has already started bearing fruit, to make the gains more sustainable and to race with the extremely growing mobility and urbanization challenges, this paper suggests a new framework and strategies of street experiments, taking the already existing and widely accepted movement (Menged Le Sew) as a potential ground. The study introduces the urbanization and mobility crisis in the country, then discusses the context of car-free days as a pathway for the sociotechnical transition towards sustainable mobility and proposes a framework for the actualization of this transition.