Page - 136 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 3/2017

136 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Patrick Naef | Using mobility and urban planning to implement atmosphere recognizing a street as a destination’. Concurring with Thomas’s reflection on the primacy of flows of movement over the anchorage of bodies, Karndacharuk et al. underline the ambiguity of recognising a street as a destination: While the term “place making” within a public space, including streets, is widely used in the fields of architecture and urban design, appropriately recognising and operating a street as a place is not a straightforward process. […] If one compares a street to a corridor in a building, it is certainly difficult for an interior designer to justify creating a place of gather- ing along and within the corridor. (2016, 206) This remark seems pertinent in the context of encounter zones development, where the aim is often to promote a gathering place. Encounter zones are precise illustrations of a process of ‘place making’ applied to a street. The examples of Versoix and Fribourg showed however that the suppression of street signage and pedestrian crossings increased a feeling of insecurity among certain users, forcing the authorities to add unplanned elements like street furniture. It seems thus important to find a middle path between a bare street and over-signalization, in order to manage an appropriate process of place making, turning a street into a ‘destination’ without jeopardizing the feeling of security of users, especially the most vulnerable. In this context, focusing more on the idea of ‘atmosphere’ in urban planning seems to offer interesting insights into the way to achieve such a balance. For the supporters of shared space, the behaviour of a driver should be influenced more by the environment than by prohibitions: ‘the sight of a school with children playing will have a Fig. 5: Photo by Tina Odermatt