Diversity of "Pedestrians on Wheels", New Challenges for Cities in 21st Century

Traditionally, pedestrians were identified as singular entities with standard needs. Reality shows us that pedestrian diversity is a reality that is becoming increasingly complex. How does urban design face the changing reality of pedestrian typologies? In the same way that in the 20th century the car set aside horse carriages and pedestrians, in the 21st century pedestrians are returning to take centre stage with regard to motor vehicles, but with new formalizations that imply new considerations in the design of streets, many of they are still unsolved. Citizens strolling on scooters, skates, skateboard, segway, unicycles, are added to the already traditional baby strollers, wheelchairs, and suitcases with wheels … "pedestrians on wheels" that pose new challenges of coexistence and design. Own functional requirements to walk and maneuver, to see and be seen … functional requirements of coexistence with other pedestrians that make a different use of the street (people looking at shop windows, pedestrians with umbrellas, reading on the smartphone…) or changes of use of the same space when the conditions are different: snow, strong sun, fog, at night … These are considerations of Universal Accessibility and Design for all that we cannot leave out while our society progresses. This paper identifies some of these new needs and studies this new pedestrian mobility is carried out through a progressive analysis in three phases: 1 classification of the different user of the street, 2 study of the Personal Mobility Devices (PMD) and 3 the new accessibility barriers that arise with the use of PMD. As a result, some action strategies are pointed out to respond to the difficulties of accessibility derived from this new reality and to integrate them into the Universal Design of the urban public space.