Our study focuses on the challenges facing sustainable urban mobility in the megacity of Sao Paulo. We aim to explore the panorama of active mobility initiatives, proposing to analyze the relationship between urban commons and innovation in public services. We selected the Reduced Speed Zone and Complete Street initiatives, which aim to improve road safety conditions (public services focused on common infrastructure), active mobility and access to public transport, and may also potentially help to reduce noise levels, improve air quality (social dilemmas/ common issues/negative externalities) and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (global commons). Based on an analytical model for interpreting innovation in services, considering competences and techniques originating from the provider (municipal government) and users (through civil society organizations), our findings identified innovations at a local level within infrastructure treatment for pedestrians. These public services were introduced in a participatory process and a collective re-appropriation of urban space. The projects contribute to the development of service provider competences, related to various interactions with civil society, resulting in a systemic view with regard to the uses, local dynamics and behavioral aspects of the users themselves. Service provider techniques may be both temporary and permanent intervention methodologies, besides methodologies for project impact evaluations. These techniques are associated with tactical urbanism as a technique for temporary urban interventions. User techniques were identified for application of the propensity score-matching method, which aims to evaluate the impacts of an instance of intervention through the comparison of groups, as well as through technical inspections and local interviews. The relationship management generated relational and organizational competences for civil society organizations. However, despite the advances indicated by the analyzed experiences of active mobility-highlighting the role of civil society organizations-and by some progress made in the regulatory framework, innovative practices have been restricted to the treatment of infrastructure for pedestrians, a change of speed limit for vehicles, and horizontal signaling to mark the perimeter of these areas. Therefore, there is a large-scale potential for the continued introduction of innovations regarding the improvement and scale gains of public services for pedestrian mobility, promoting participatory restructuring as a form of (re)appropriation of urban public spaces by its own users, improving the current negative externalities and social costs of urban mobility.

In recent decades, governments have invested in strategic territories focused on knowledge production and application, which are strategic for socioeconomic development, particularly in urban areas. However, conceptual and terminological diversity hinders aspects such as the systematization of the literature, the advance of theoretical conceptualizations, and the formulation of coherent policies, especially in the context of socioenvironmental challenges. In this study, with the aim of consolidating this literature, we have conducted a systematic review with bibliometric and content analysis, examining publications on eight denominations associated with these territories. The literature reveals the existence of an established field; nonetheless, themes and denominations are still dispersed in the corpus. Among 400 authors, 339 published a single article, and only 13 authors have three or more studies in the sample. We identified a core of 11 journals that concentrate 73 of the 214 analyzed texts. We propose the term “knowledge territories” as an umbrella concept. A total of 114 case studies were identified. Governance is the most recurrent dimension (53% of the texts). Topics such as climate change, food production and diffuse effects of territorial occupation are rarely explored, as are the cases analyzed in the context of semi-peripheral and peripheral countries, indicating gaps and opportunities for future research.

Since the last century, various territories dedicated to knowledge production have emerged, such as university campuses, Science and Technology Parks, and more recently, innovation districts. Over the past decades, with the growth of the knowledge-based services sector, they have evolved in parallel with different innovation models, incorporating greater social and environmental concerns based on the Quintuple helix model. This article investigates the strategies and approaches adopted in the transition of knowledge territories to what some authors are calling the fourth generation, using the urban development initiative Paris-Saclay and the university campus distrotec, located respectively in France and Mexico, as case studies. The first example demonstrates a strategy of creating an urban campus in an area where existing institutions did not interact, resulting in a more sustainable space capable of promoting social interaction. The second example presents an effort to integrate a closed university campus with the existing surroundings, aiming to incorporate society, the environment, and businesses into a closed academic environment. The examples are situated in two different contexts, the first in a developed country and the second in a peripheral one. For this analysis, the concepts of Triple Bottom Line and Knowledge-Based Urban Development were adopted. This study contributes to its field by developing a model that can be applied to other knowledge territories, facilitating the identification of their development phase and the quality of their built environments.

Resumo O trabalho tem o objetivo de analisar os desafios da mobilidade ativa na perspectiva da inovação em serviços. Foram selecionados como estudos de caso: as áreas 40 de São Miguel Paulista e Santana e o projeto de rua completa da Rua Joel Carlos Borges. Na perspectiva da interpretação da inovação em serviços baseada em novas competências e técnicas do prestador, os projetos contribuíram para o desenvolvimento de competências no setor público para utilização de metodologias de avaliação de impacto e metodologia de leitura urbana, trazendo uma visão sistêmica e sobre os usos e dinâmicas locais, e aspectos comportamentais dos usuários. Tais competências estão associadas ao urbanismo tático como técnica para intervenções urbanas temporárias. Os princípios aplicados nos projetos estão alinhados à Política Nacional de Mobilidade Urbana, mas até o momento se restringiram a ações de alteração do limite de velocidade dos veículos e de sinalização horizontal para identificação do perímetro dessas áreas. Não foi identificada introdução de serviços de tratamento cicloviário. Portanto, apontam-se grandes potencialidades para a continuação da introdução de inovações para aprimoramento e ganho de escala dos serviços públicos para transporte não motorizado em consonância com o paradigma da mobilidade urbana sustentável.