Ioannis Kanakis
Ioannis Kanakis is a graduate of the Physics department of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) (1991) and holds a Master's Degree in "History and Philosophy of Science and Technology" of the National Technical University Athens (NTUA) & (NKUA) (2000). He has worked as a Physics teacher in secondary education (1993-2002) and as a Laboratory Teaching Tutor at the NTUA and the Technical University of Crete (TUC) in “Physics” and “Renewable Energy Sources” educational laboratories (2003-today). He has presented papers at international conferences on issues of renewable energy sources. For the last 5 years his research interests focus on sustainable urban transitions and especially sustainable urban mobility/transport transitions , SUMPs (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans) and Active Mobility (especially bicycle).
Sesión
Ioannis Kanakis & Stelios Rozakis , Technical University of Crete
This paper examines the design and implementation of Active Mobility Safe School Routes (AMSSR) in Chania, Greece, as a case of infrastructural justice, focusing on the political reallocation of street space and its implications for power, access, and everyday mobility. Grounded in an Action Research framework, the project mobilizes students, parents, and teachers as co-producers of knowledge and co-designers of interventions, foregrounding bottom-up agency in contesting car-dominated urban space.
We conceptualize AMSSR as a transition experiment that not only tests technical and behavioral interventions but also reconfigures who has the right to occupy and shape the street. By prioritizing walking and cycling for school travel, the project implicitly redistributes space away from motorized traffic toward more vulnerable users, raising critical questions about stakeholders’ trade offs in decision-making processes in urban mobility governance.
The paper situates the intervention within Chania’s existing mobility regime—characterized by car dependency, limited pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, and fragmented governance—and analyzes whether co-creative processes (awareness-raising, trust-building, and stakeholder alignment) enable infrastructural transformation. Early findings highlight tensions between institutional inertia and community-driven demands, as well as the role of schools as strategic entry points for broader spatial and cultural shifts.
By linking Safe School Routes to debates on infrastructural justice and transition theory, the study contributes to a limited body of literature that frames active school mobility as both a political and spatial intervention. It offers empirical insights into how small-scale, community-based projects can challenge dominant allocations of urban space and open pathways toward more equitable and sustainable mobility systems.