Community Drawing and Storytelling to Understand the Place Experience of Walking and Cycling in Dushanbe, Tajikistan

Abstract

Transit infrastructure is a critical determinant of the layout and sustainability performance of residential landscapes and neighborhoods. Though the spatial aspects of transit design and their associated impact on health, congestion, air pollution, accident rates, and emissions of greenhouse gases are well understood, the experiential-qualitative aspects of mobility have often been ignored in the travel and transport literature. This paper presents the place-understandings of pedestrians and cyclists concerning neighborhood safety in Dushanbe, the capital city of Tajikistan. Community perspectives were captured through drawing and storytelling workshops as a method of public engagement through creative experience. While reporting on the veracity of this collaborative, creative, and place-based methodology, the paper presents workshop outcomes that describe problematic non-auto neighborhood transit experiences that, if unchecked, could constitute a significant challenge to the sustainable post-Soviet transformation of Dushanbe’s residential neighborhoods.

1. Introduction

1.1. Rationale for the Study

1.1.1. Transit as an Element of Sustainable Landscapes and Green Recovery

As pointed out by Smith et al. [1] the importance of the landscape in service to sustainable residential development should not be overlooked. A global move towards sustainable residential landscape design and planning remains an important goal in the current era of post-COVID “green recovery” for improved environmental and social performance. Fears et al. [2] eloquently describe green recovery as a global economic recovery through low-carbon socioeconomic pathways. Landscape-focused responses to the green recovery challenge include the academe-led Green New Deal Superstudio in the USA [3], and the policy paper, “Greener Recovery: Delivering a Sustainable Recovery from COVID-19” by the Landscape Institute in the UK [4]. Among other recommendations, the Institute’s paper advocates for a more landscape and natural-capital-led approach to the planning and design of new housing and infrastructure[—]including routes for access and movement—while warning against the prevailing approach of leaving the “spaces between buildings as an afterthought, leading to reduced community and environmental outcomes” (ibid, p6). This serves as an important reminder that the elements beyond and between buildings can occupy a significant, if not dominant, proportion of developed areas, and have a major effect on the morphology and performance of development. For example, the space allocated to different transit modes as roads and streets, parking, and pathways can, in sum, cover around a third of the space occupied by neighborhoods and city enclaves [5]. Furthermore, their spatial character can be a significant driver of the form, pattern, and morphology of residential areas [6] which can have direct impacts on residents’ health, congestion, air pollution, accident rates, and emissions of greenhouse gases [7,8,9].

Formulation of green recovery initiatives is occurring across the globe [10,11] and a critical aspect of these initiatives will be the facilitation of non-auto transport, including macroscale support for international public transit systems [12]. However, the nature of the interface between transport and the preferences of post-COVID society is unclear [12,13] and the design and allocation of space for different transit modes at the urban design and site scale, can often be a point of public contention [14]. In plotting more sustainable futures of green recovery, public experiences and preferences are important, if sometimes confounding and contradictory considerations. To these ends, in their framing of how to tackle green recovery projects, Collins and Welsh [15] highlight the need to carefully consider at a grass-roots level, the mesoscale (household and neighborhood groupings) and microscale (the individual) as well as the macroscale and often top-down policies, practices, and behaviors that are held at the level of cities, regions, and nations.

The multi-faceted aspects of transit infrastructure’s impact on residential environments mean it is a critical focus for landscape and urban design practice and scholarship, and issues related to transit and movement at the finer, mesoscale of neighborhoods and communities, and the microscale of individuals are unavoidably important considerations in both landscape sustainability and green recovery. Arguably, a future of sustainable transport options is a particularly critical green recovery issue for locations with hitherto poor road safety records that are detrimental to lower carbon lifestyles. One such example is Tajikistan, and its capital city, Dushanbe. Tajikistan’s overall green recovery will, according to the World Bank [16], address the transfer of energy production towards a diversified portfolio of renewable sources, as well as moves towards a digital economy. From these national, macroscale strategies, it is possible to extrapolate down and consider the implications of decarbonization and digital working on the frequency, modes, and qualities of everyday transit within neighborhoods, and the allocation of space to different road and street users in residential areas. However, Tajikistan’s and Dushanbe’s hitherto poor record of road safety, signals challenges for future shifts towards less carbon-reliant lifestyles, and the qualities and character of neighborhoods where people might work as well as live.

1.1.2. Road Safety in Tajikistan and Dushanbe

Data gathered by the World Health Organization [WHO] and the Global Burden of Disease initiative [GBD] report that, as of 2016, Tajikistan saw between six and ten times as many estimated road fatalities as the best-performing countries in the Eastern Europe and Central Asian region, North Macedonia and Serbia (see: Road Safety in Tajikistan | Traffic accidents, crash, fatalities and injury statistics | GRSF (roadsafetyfacility.org) (accessed on 25 August 2022). In 2017, spurred by these alarming statistics, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development [EBRD] appointed the UK-based road safety charity the Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport [EASST] to work with the Young Generation of Tajikistan [YGT], a Dushanbe-based, youth-led NGO, on awareness campaigns for road safety issues in their city (see Campaign for safe and sustainable roads in Dushanbe (ebrd.com) (accessed on 25 August 2022)). However, as recently as 2021, the Central Asian Bureau for Analytical Reporting [CABAR] reports that high mortality and accident rates persist on Tajik roads, with seatbelt awareness, drunk driving, speeding, and negligent driving all remaining problematic (see Tajikistan has the highest road traffic death rate in the region—CABAR.asia). In a second report, CABAR focuses on pedestrian behavior and circumstances within Dushanbe specifically (see Photo Report: How safe are the roads in Tajikistan’s capital city for pedestrians?—CABAR.asia). Together, these online materials suggest a persistent and hazardous combination of dangerous and negligent behavior by both drivers and pedestrians, as well as a lack of supportive infrastructure and technology for non-auto users (Figure 1).

It appears that five years of efforts by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, in partnership with the Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport and Young Generation of Tajikistan have, so far, affected only limited progress in Tajikistan and Dushanbe, with 2021′s traffic fatalities remaining the highest in the region and comparable, per-capita, with China and Russia. The published explanations for the ongoing challenges are largely based upon official statements from governmental bodies such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan and the State Automobile Inspectorate. However, there is little, if any, available information on road safety from the perspective of the local public that conveys their experiences and stories at the scales of communities and individuals, nor further perspectives from EASST and YGT as community-focused activists and advocates.

1.1.3. Contribution of the Present Study

This current study addresses gaps in knowledge at several scales of landscape and urbanism discourse. At the micro and mesoscale of individuals and communities, the paper presents place experiences of pedestrians and cyclists within Dushanbe and, in doing, provides some bottom-up reflections on challenges and opportunities for more green-recovery aligned non-auto options. In particular, the paper reflects upon the veracity of community engagement in matters of road safety through the selected method of public drawing and storytelling workshops. The study also presents contextual understandings from stakeholders with EASST and YGT who work directly with affected communities in Dushanbe. With this geographical focus, the paper provides a modest contribution to the emerging literature addressing macroscale shifts towards more sustainable urban residential landscapes and infrastructure within Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and within the socio-political context of transitions away from socialist and/or Soviet influence.

1.2. The Study Area

1.2.1. Dushanbe, Capital City of Tajikistan

Tajikistan’s economy, culture, and environment—from energy and agricultural production to city planning and architectural design—still bear the imprint of Soviet influence. Dushanbe, which became the capital of an independent Tajikistan in 1991, lies in the Gissar Valley in the southern foothills of the Gissar Range of the Pamir-Alay Mountain System, and along the west and eastern banks of the Varzob River tributary to the northern banks of the larger Kofanihon River (Figure 2).

Dushanbe and its environs played an important role in the production of cotton for the entire Soviet Union, driving large population increases through the twentieth century and bequeathing to the city the name of Stalinabad from 1929 until 1961. As to be expected, the planning and architecture of Dushanbe were rapidly implemented and have, historically, closely followed Soviet trends with particular emphasis on development and programming in the central areas. Today, Dushanbe’s population of some 864,000 people inhabits a still rapidly growing city of post-Soviet transition. Adineh [17] notes the city’s extensive re-development and the primacy of large-scale road projects such as bridges and overpasses in the new vision for the city (Figure 3), and comments on the concomitant erasure of Soviet-era architecture and infrastructure and the positivity towards redevelopment expressed by “many” people.

1.2.2. Wider Geographical Context

Elsewhere in the former Soviet-bloc, and other, formerly socialist nations, authors have commented on the significant challenges of transition to new urban futures, such as the reformulation of post-Soviet residential areas from large catchments of little variety, towards mixed-use neighborhoods achieved through more nuanced and inclusive models of delivery [18,19,20,21,22,23]. Despite inevitable differences stemming from specific geography and history, regional case studies in Lithuania, Ukraine, Serbia, and North Macedonia, have provided some interesting lessons. These studies suggest that transitions in post-Soviet or formerly socialist societies, and especially in growing cities, will necessitate the removal of outdated planning and development procedures, just as surely as it will see the ongoing removal of obsolete buildings, spaces, and infrastructure.

In this sense, the current transitional era is, for many cultures in the Eastern Europe/ Central Asian region, an opportunity to reimagine both the physical forms of cities and the processes by which change might come about, and this opportunity has been brought into further, sharp focus by the emerging lens of global green recovery rhetoric. The literature suggests that, even before the emergence of green recovery discourse, many post-Soviet and socialist nations had been moving towards the reformulation of cities along the lines of smart development and growth, and the reconstitution of residential areas as recognizable neighborhoods in which non-auto transit is an important facet. Furthermore, the case studies within the region suggest that community participation has been emerging as a key tactic for understanding post-Soviet/socialist cities and neighborhoods and how they might develop, and that more and more citizens are being allowed to define their city, drawing upon not only their understandings of space but also, critically, place. It is in the engagement with public place understanding, that this paper is largely focused.

1.3. Literature Review

1.3.1. Understanding Locations and Routes as Places

To make a case for the place understanding through community participation methods employed in this study, it is first necessary to delineate the broader conceptual idea of place: that is, locations with which people are both cognitively familiar and emotionally attached. This feeling of place can go beyond the familiarity of private dwellings to include a range of locations at different scales including the neighborhood, the district, the city, and cherished places of recreation such as wild areas and scenic landscapes [24]. Greater familiarity with a geographical location allows people to gain an understanding based on a complex interchange of the personal and the universal, the subjective and objective, and the internal and external; what philosopher Arnold Berleant refers to as the self-environment continuum [25] and what Seamon [26] refers to as the lifeworld. The world as both an objective and measurable space, and as an experienced and perceived place, are the two fundamental, intertwined lenses through which humans understand their world [27,28]. It is important to emphasize the unavoidable entanglement of the material and the measurable world with that which is perceptual and perceived, even when one is surrounded by the unremarkable and everyday [26] (Op. Cit). Furthermore, in our everyday lifeworlds, the routes, paths, streets, and roads between nodal places such as buildings, parks, and squares, can be just as significant as what is experienced when situated and at rest [29,30,31].

Non-auto travelers—the focus of this study—are involved in a rich layering of experiences and entanglements with the physical world as they proceed on their journey, and this is quite different from the experience of motorists [32]. For example, in their recent paper, Wesener et al. [33] explain that “Cycling is not about the distant observation of landscapes that fly past. It is a continuous and active bodily experience within evolving landscapes where cyclists need to pay particular attention to road surfaces and obstacles that would be irrelevant for car drivers” (pp. 2–3). Similarly, Wunderlich [34] describes urban walking as both a sensual, somatic experience within most lifeworlds where the kinetic and corporeal, as well as the sensed and perceived intertwine: “it is while walking that we sensorially and reflectively interact with the urban environment, firming up our relationship with urban places. Walking practices and ‘senses of (or for) place’ are fundamentally related, the former affecting the latter and vice versa” (p. 1). While other authors have again attested to walking and cycling as urban transit modes that involve negotiations between the physical, the social, and the experiential [35,36] the “experiential-qualitative aspects of mobility have often been ignored in the travel and transport literature” [33] (Op. Cit, p. 3).

While truly a practice that involves facets of space and place, non-auto transit also extends the scales of urban territory with which a person or a group may become familiar and emotionally attached [24] (Op. Cit) [37] and, therefore, facilitating place attachment beyond the immediate home or residential unit, is likely to be an important consideration in post-Soviet, or other transitional cities, that are looking to inculcate a sense of neighborhood and community. Lewicka [24] (Op. Cit) notes that broader place attachments at the neighborhood or district scale, are strongly influenced by social factors such as a sense of belonging, safety, and security, and it is also important to note that place attachment can have negative connotations related to frustrating and frightening places and experiences [38]. In short, neighborhoods and districts where cyclists and pedestrians are prohibited, threatened, or marginalized, are delimited in their capacity to be understood as a welcome place with a sense of community that encourages a low-carbon lifestyle. These challenging conditions may not always be apparent from a spatial perspective and may only come to light through a consideration of cyclists’ and pedestrians’ experiences, lifeworlds, and sense of place.

1.3.2. Cultural Ecology, Community Participation, and Creative Experiences

To understand a city, district, or neighborhood as a place, it is necessary to delve beyond the measurable cartography of spaces, and to engage with communities directly, to understand the experiences of their lifeworld. The engagement with lived, public experiences in the pursuit of more informed and sensitive programs, policies, and change to environments has been noted by Fischer et al. [39]. Arguably, the most visible proponent of community engagement within the fields of landscape and urban design is Randolph T. Hester, whose book Design for Ecological Democracy contains the passage: “A primary lesson of ecology is that everything is interconnected in one single web of life. To work together to solve difficult problems, we need to be aware of, experience, and understand the interrelationships between multiple aspects of the inhabited landscape.” [40] (p. 49). As an important sub-set of this interconnectedness of place and people, the creative activities of a society—its art, design, and making—can be seen as a cultural ecology that is a vital facet of overall health and resilience [41]. One element of a healthy cultural ecology is the public’s exposure to, and opportunities for, creative experiences that, in turn, can help to precipitate ‘reflective individuals,’ ‘engaged citizens,’ ‘urban regeneration,’ ‘engagement and positive health and wellbeing’ [42]. It follows, therefore, that authentic place-based understandings and community engagement on urban dilemmas might draw from creative experiences that allow the public to speak to specific issues, while also strengthening a creative network of public actors that goes beyond the cultural hubs, clusters, and districts labeled on city plans [43].

In a recent paper, Glăveanu & Beghetto [44] describe effective creative experiences for engagement with communities, as those that “involve principled engagement [and] can be defined as novel person–world encounters grounded in meaningful actions and interactions, which are marked by the principles of: open-endedness, nonlinearity, pluri-perspectives, and future-orientation.” (p. 76). Thus, a creative experience for community engagement—though joyful and expressive—should not be without consequence: rather it should be meaningful and principled, with an eye to future outcomes. It is here that we see the possibility of resonance between creative experiences, citizen reflection, and community engagement.

Although public engagement through creative experiences cannot be conflated with carefree experiences and play, other authors have reported on ways to involve the public in questions of urban planning, development, and design, through methods that bring a sense of novelty or unfamiliarity into engagement. Anik et al. [45], for example, report on the use of imagery, informality, and social media to engage with community members around the themes of sustainable transport infrastructure. Elsewhere, Poplin [46] describes a novel and playful online gaming platform that allows the public to participate in urban planning scenarios. However, it is not clear if and how online venues serve some of Glăveanu & Beghetto’s hallmarks of creative experiences, such as a sense of open-endedness and interpretive content and, especially, real-time participant interaction and the to-and-fro of perspectives.

1.3.3. The Case for Storytelling and Drawing

In this paper, the method of creative experience used to engage with the public combines storytelling and drawing. Concerning the former, in its ability to both project one’s inner narrative, and its tendency to “snowball” participation and sharing (with participant contributions encouraging more participation and sharing within a group) storytelling is an ancient and fundamental human trait of information and experience sharing [47,48]. It is also recognized as a robust approach to innovative public participation [46] (Op. Cit). Specifically, it can initiate and catalyze conversations that mobilize community stakeholders to work toward the betterment of their community [49]. Elsewhere, authors have noted the enhancement of storytelling through visualization techniques [50,51,52] and, in particular, the use of simple hand drawing to facilitate naturalistic, informal interactions [53]. While Poplin [46] (Op. Cit) notes that basic paper and pencil sketches can capture objects and situations in geographic space, others have noted the use of hand-drawing and other image-making techniques to capture perceptions and feelings [54,55]. In his explanation of the symbiosis between drawing and storytelling, Brailas [56] posits that the hand-drawing process seems to cause related feelings and emotions to be internally accessed, and more readily available to verbal sharing, even if the feelings or emotions are not clearly part of the drawing itself (Figure 4).

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. General Approach

The general approach of this present work is one of the case study, and an in-depth, multi-faceted exploration of complex issues in a real-life setting [57]: in this case the experiences of pedestrians and cyclists in residential neighborhoods in Dushanbe. Several authors providing introductory texts on research methods have commended case studies for allowing detailed investigations within a limited timeframe [58,59,60] and examples of case studies used to understand landscape and urban design abound. Francis [61] and Carmona [62] as examples, frame case studies as tools that can provide in-depth information about the process and/or product of a single landscape or urbanism project, site, or condition, or a comparative analysis of several projects. In general, case studies are an excellent way to excavate the “hidden” stories that might otherwise be unavailable to a researcher, that can go on to inform future practice and/or policy, and contribute to the canon of disciplinary and practice knowledge.

2.2. Research Procedures

2.2.1. Drawing and Storytelling Workshops

Two drawing and storytelling workshops were undertaken to provide a venue for creative experience and elicit information about place understanding and experience for cyclists and pedestrians in Dushanbe. The first workshop was undertaken in August 2021, and the second in September of 2022. An open call for recruitment was led by staff at the Young Generation of Tajikistan in Dushanbe, leveraging the group’s social media platform (a Facebook page with more than 1.5 thousand followers) and professional and personal contacts within the Faculty of Transport at the Tajik Technical University within the city (Figure 5).

Despite the group’s name, Young Generation of Tajikistan has online followers and event participants across a range of ages and life-stages. The workshops were held at the American Space of Dushanbe; a public resource supported by the US Embassy in Tajikistan that includes meeting spaces, media labs and collections, and other recreational and educational amenities. The American Space is located within the city center, specifically in Dushanbe’s civic and educational district. The space is an accessible and comfortable space for discussion, collaboration, and sharing (Figure 6).

The author provided an approximately one-hour introductory lecture at the beginning of each workshop via videotelephony, focusing on two primary areas: the concept of place understanding versus space understanding, and the historic and contemporary use of drawing to convey ideas of place. The lecture was given in English and kindly translated in real-time into Tajik by members of Young Generation of Tajikistan staff (Figure 7).

Before the lecture, Young Generation of Tajikistan staff provided research protocol sheets in English and Tajik detailing the relevant research approvals and ensuring that participants were clear about the research objectives, and their rights to anonymity and to decline participation. The author provided the following structure to guide the Young Generation of Tajikistan staff leading the workshops:

• Can participants locate on neighborhood maps, areas, nodes, and routes of notable non-auto experience while walking and/or cycling?
• Nodes are specific locations, such as corners, junctions, and crossing places.
• Areas are larger spaces such as street frontages, parks, gardens, and so on.
• Routes are linear spaces used to move to and from destinations in a neighborhood such as roads, streets, alleys, and paths.
• Areas, nodes, and routes are not mutually exclusive. Students can co-mingle these locations on a map.
• Notable non-auto experiences can be based on actual events, and/or perceptions and feelings.
• Participants are encouraged to draw how they feel, to help them describe their perspective.
• Drawings of how participants feel can be on the same maps used for locating experiences, new maps, or plain paper.
• Drawings can be literal and representative of the physical spaces where experiences occur.
• Drawings can be abstract and expressive of feelings and moods.
• Drawings can be a mixture of literal and abstract.
• All drawings should include written descriptions to aid interpretation and collation.
• YGT staff should be available to participants to answer questions and listen to stories as they draw, encouraging them to develop their ideas.
• Participants should be accommodated in small groups of five to encourage talking, and exchange of ideas and thoughts.
• Drawings should not be treated as “art”.
• Tell students that their work will be scanned and shared, but because of the stories they tell, not because of their artistic technique.
• Drawings are not “exhibited” on a wall for the larger group to share.
• Drawings can be shared among students in a sub-group, but no one must share their drawn work during the workshop.

In sum, this approach covers the keynote best practices reported by Brailas (Op. Cit) in terms of using drawing to enrich and synergize with verbal explanations and storytelling: it establishes trust through information and drawing precedent sharing; it provides a setting of guidance, safety, security, and encouragement; and it down-plays the artistic quality of the drawings themselves. Following the workshops, YGT staff scanned and uploaded drawings and text notes used to document participants’ stories and experiences. The drawings were studied for content, and the transcribed verbal content of the workshops was analyzed using an inductive content analysis technique to identify a hierarchy of common themes, subthemes, and linking themes [63].

2.2.2. Ground-Truthing through Stakeholder Semi-Structured Interviews

Based on the outcomes of the workshops, and general points of discussion, a short list of five open-ended questions was emailed to key stakeholders at the Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport (EASST) in London, UK (CST + 6 hours) and at Young Generation of Tajikistan (YGT) in Dushanbe (CST + 11 hours). As the author is based at a location within the Central Time Zone of the USA, emailed interview questions, rather than videotelephony interviews were used, allowing the procedure to advance more efficiently. EASST and YGT stakeholder participation was identified as an important part of the study, insofar as it might bring clarity and/or ground-truthing reinforcement to the public participants’ drawings and stories. As project partners that work closely with, and under the auspices of, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and directly with local communities, it was recognized that EASST and YGT might provide professional, robust insight, enriched by perspectives that are unlikely to be obscured by the political biases of city and government officials. Four key EASST and YGT stakeholders were identified by the author through prior work arranging and organizing the drawing and storytelling workshops.

Interview questions were sent to the four stakeholders via email and were attached to a preface page detailing the relevant research approvals, ensuring that participants were clear about the research objectives, and their rights to anonymity and to decline participation. Care was taken to format interview questions to avoid yes or no answers, and to invite follow-up questions via email from both sides. This format is akin to that described elsewhere for semi-structured face-to-face interviews [61] (Op. Cit), [64,65].

3. Results

3.1. Drawing and Storytelling Workshops

3.1.1. Descriptive Statistics of Participants

Across the two drawing and storytelling workshops, a total of 40 community members participated in the exercises to draw and share experiences of walking and cycling in Dushanbe (see

Table 1. Participants in the 2021 Drawing and Storytelling Workshop, the American Space, Dushanbe, August 2021–2022.

	Total N	Student	Working	Retired	Average Age	% Female/Male
2021	24	7	15	2	30	25/75
2022	16	4	12	0	29	6/94

). This small sample of self-selected participants cannot be attributed with representative experiences or opinions, and the results of the workshops alone cannot be extrapolated to propose a broader case. However, the workshop outcomes of stories, experiences (see

Table 2. Content Analysis of Stories and Experiences from 2021 and 2022 Workshops Combined.

Emergent Themes	Emergent Sub-Themes	Emergent Linking-Themes	Illustrative Participants’ Quotes
Behavior of drivers	Aggression and hostility towards pedestrians and cyclists Professional drivers, such as taxi and bus drivers, ignore rules Illegal activity, such as ignoring red lights and speeding Disconnected routes and poor infrastructure Poorly maintained walking and cycling surfaces	The need for dedicated walking and cycling infrastructure across the city	“Car drivers often pin us down [and] drivers drive red lights.” “When you cross the road to green and a couple of seconds remain at the traffic light, half of the drivers start honking so that pedestrians start walking faster, because do not slow down the movement of cars.” “We live in a good area, but for young people it’s easier to cross a road. On occasion you can cross the road. What about seniors and people with disabilities; they cannot run across the road a great distance to the nearby underpass.” “Bicycle lane network is what we need in Dushanbe, it will not be enough to build two or three bike lanes, we need a whole network of bike lanes.” “For tourists this road looks like adventure especially when they are riding on JEEP but for locals it’s a big problem.”
Qualities of neighborhood and residential areas	Low police presence in residential neighborhoods Insufficient cyclist and pedestrian infrastructure Marginalization of pedestrians and cyclists by the experience of road traffic	The need for dedicated walking and cycling infrastructure in neighborhoods and residential areas Pedestrians and cyclists are concerned about the spatial and place qualities of their residential areas	“In the city center it is safer to go because there are a large concentration of police. As soon as you leave the center you need to be very careful.” “I feel terrible when I am coming back home. It’s all a mess, a lot of traffic and people, cars are buzzing, people are shouting.” “Our area belongs more and more to cars! Some people work and live not far away. They don’t need cars, they are just not walking.” “Our neighborhood streets are very small children riding bicycles and scooters there, and when one car passes, there is no space left for the roadway.” “We need more bike paths in our neighborhood streets where children and adults can ride bicycles safely inside the area.”

), and drawings (see

Table 3. Content Analysis of Participants’ Drawings from 2021 and 2022 Workshops Combined.

Emergent Themes	Emergent Sub-Themes
A longing for human scale in residential areas	Inhuman-scaled and overwhelming infrastructure A need for infrastructural and urban hierarchy more balanced towards cyclists and pedestrians
Reconceptualization of vehicular traffic	Traffic-free areas Traffic balanced with the needs of others
The mental and physical health aspects of walking and cycling	Cycling can “give life” and freedom The somatic, sensorial aspects of cycling
The aspirational aspects of vehicular travel	Freedom to move beyond the city Travel and experience

and Figure 8, Figure 9, Figure 10, Figure 11, Figure 12, Figure 13 and Figure 14) presented here can be compared and contextualized with the evidence provided by official statements and the statistics above, and with the stakeholder ground-truthing survey findings (see

Table 4. Semi-structured interview questions and responses.

Primary Interview Questions	Elicited Secondary Follow-Up Questions	Summary of Content of Responses
Generally, Tajikistan has a poor record of transport safety. This is also true of Dushanbe, specifically. Why do you think that this is the case?	Workshop participants suggested that driver behavior might be problematic; what can you tell me about that?	Lack of respect for non-auto users Young, inexperienced drivers Young drivers buying cheaper, outdated cars Young drivers and pedestrians prone to risk-taking Transitional nature of the city and focus on large highways as a badge of progress
Tell me about how/why EASST/YGT become involved in road safety in Dushanbe through partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development		Nurture grassroots knowledge and ownership of challenges Nurture grassroots leadership and advocacy Positive action through education and implementation Improve public participation Emergency and fatality prevention
What do you think are the most significant barriers and opportunities for improving road safety for pedestrians and cyclists in Dushanbe?	Workshop participants suggested low prioritization of pedestrians and cyclists. How do you feel about the current levels of cyclist and pedestrian prioritization in Dushanbe?	Lack of involving people in decision making around the planning and design of their city. Cyclists and pedestrians are not treated as equal road users
	How do you feel about the possible future levels of cyclist and pedestrian prioritization in Dushanbe?	There is little investment in non-auto infrastructure Victim-blaming towards cyclists and pedestrians Encouraging more pedestrians and cyclists could impact cultural norms? Improvements for walking and cycling in residential areas could be funded through external sources such as the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), etc.
How do the public feel about the redevelopment of Dushanbe in general? Specifically, the demolition of Soviet-era buildings and spaces?		Change is rapid and dramatic Independence and demonstrations of progress are important History is being erased without proper consideration
The outcomes of the workshops, suggest they could be useful methods for public engagement through a creative experience. What benefits do you think the drawing workshop approach has, and could bring to community engagement and public participation in the planning and design of urban areas, neighborhoods, and districts in Dushanbe?		Participation is very low and can occur as a box-checking exercise with no commitment The workshops have given participants the opportunity to think about a new perspective Encourage the public to not just accept the status quo of “more roads”

). In sum, this material can be used to weave a coherent narrative. Furthermore, although statistical analysis of responses was beyond the scope of this paper, it should be noted that, with an average age of 29–30 years old, the workshop participants align somewhat with a national population where 70% are 30 years old or younger (Vibbert, Pers Comm.).

3.1.2. Inductive Content Analysis of Transcribed Participants’ Stories and Experiences

The stories of participants’ experiences corroborate the official narrative that walking and cycling in Dushanbe’s urban center and in its residential areas can be highly problematic. The workshop participants told of a road-based culture where motorists can be thoughtless, and even explicitly hostile towards pedestrians and cyclists, to the point where participants felt a wholesale reconfiguration of cycling and pedestrian infrastructure was required across the whole city.

3.1.3. Participants’ Workshop Drawings

The workshop participants provided 32 drawings that deepened their storytelling and resonated strongly with feelings of marginalization and of being overwhelmed when attempting to navigate the city and residential areas by foot or by bicycle. (Figure 8).

Together with the participants’ stories, the accumulated drawings described the spatial character of roads and streets in Dushanbe’s residential and urban districts, and clearly identified inarguable, spatial challenges. There was a preponderance of objective content in the drawings, relating to road alignments that sever non-auto connectivity; confusing delineation of roads through a profusion of markings and signage; a lack of necessary apparatus such as traffic calming, clear crossings, medians, and pedestrian refuge areas. The participants’ bias towards conveying objective fidelity and granting primacy to the visual understanding of the environment is, in the author’s experience, a common trait of this type of exercise. However, some participants provided drawings that relate to other, non-visual senses (Figure 9).

Elsewhere, a few participants further transcended the visual and spatial description of current conditions to draw their feelings in more abstract terms (Figure 10) and to propose projections for desirous futures (Figure 11 and Figure 12).

As well as resonating with extant data and documentation regarding pedestrian and cyclist safety in Dushanbe, the stories and drawings elucidated, somewhat surprisingly, apparent sympathies towards aspects of vehicular transport. Despite the strong advocacy for cycling and walking, there was also an acknowledgment of the benefits of car ownership and road building. Several workshop participants drew harmonious visions of roads stretching out from the city towards a mountainous countryside, the horizon, and the world beyond (Figure 13).

3.2. Ground-Truthing through Stakeholder Semi-Structured Interviews

Following the workshops, EASST and YGT stakeholders were surveyed to ground-truth the workshop participants’ impressions, as well as to further understand the challenges of walking and cycling in Dushanbe. The general sense of marginalization of pedestrians and cyclists shared in the workshops, and the broader cultural bias towards motorists and road building was reinforced by the interviewed stakeholders.

Beyond the insight provided by the workshop participants, the EASST and YGT stakeholders identified a particular concern for young people, and their vulnerability to road accidents and fatalities, whether on foot, on a bicycle, or behind the wheel of a vehicle.

“Due to economic factors, young people are more likely to travel as pedestrians and cyclists.

Therefore, they are inherently more at risk by virtue of their socio-economic status and an absent safe system designed to protect them. Traditional arguments also suggest that young males tend to take more risks when they do drive [and] due to their socio-economic status, young males use older ‘cheaper’ cars which lack modern safety standards.”

- Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport Staff Member

More broadly, the stakeholder insight reinforced the sense from the workshops that motorists might consider themselves superior, and that it may be that an emerging Tajik culture conflates car ownership with aspirations of post-Soviet progress.

“As a developing country in [post-Soviet] transition, investment has focused on building road infrastructure, leading to far higher speeds on highways and urban roads.”

- Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport Staff Member

Again, cyclists do not consider as an equal road user, drivers are poorly trained both theoretically and practically. Lack of infrastructure is also the main point.

- Young Generation of Tajikistan Staff Member

Reflecting on their involvement in road safety in Dushanbe, EASST and YGT staff were clear in their commitment to grass-roots action through education and implementation of physical improvements, and the creation of a community network to undergird any imported expertise or insight.

“EASST was established [in London] in 2009 to nurture homegrown expertise and leadership in a region with a shared history and common need to improve road safety and mobility. EASST’s core ethos is that local ownership of an issue is essential for sustainable change. Sending in international experts is not enough—local expertise, champions and leadership are vital.”

- Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport Staff Member

“Community programs [that are] trying to transform the [region’s] cities for cyclists and pedestrians [while] simultaneously working with [international] programs, trying to project foreign experience in local realities [that] is necessary to increase cycling culture in society.”

- Young Generation of Tajikistan Staff Member

Nevertheless, the EASST and YGT stakeholders conceded that their partnership has struggled to affect much headway against the entrenched marginalization of pedestrians and cyclists in Dushanbe. Within a context of political inertia and even cultural antipathy on the city’s roads, the stakeholders believed that even modest, incremental introductions of dedicated infrastructure and spaces for pedestrians and cyclists are an immediately critical aspect of residential landscape planning and design in Dushanbe.

“[While] you can help people learn road safety and pedestrian safety by modeling safe behavior, having safety rules, and teaching children safety… we need to slow cars, create separated places for people walking and biking, transit networks, not just isolated pieces of sidewalk or bike lane.”

- Young Generation of Tajikistan Staff Member

While the concerns of the EASST and YGT stakeholders resonated with those of the workshop participants, there was a clear-eyed recognition that Dushanbe’s rapid expansion of strategic road building and regional traffic infrastructure provides a necessary and practical armature for post-Soviet progress. While some of the workshop participants alluded to a spirit of greater freedom, mobility, and global connectivity through regional road building, the YGT stakeholders pointed the author towards recent statements from the Tajik Embassy to the USA, that outlined the necessity of a matured transport sector for trade and economic development (see: https://mfa.tj/en/washington/view/188/transportation-sector-of-the-republic-of-tajikistan) (accessed on 3 July 2022).

However, at the scale of residential neighborhoods, the stakeholders alluded to possible future partnerships with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) whose Green Cities program now includes, since 2019, Dushanbe. External funding for infrastructure projects, the stakeholders noted, may mandate the inclusion of non-auto options in the planning and development of residential districts. Dushanbe’s Green City Action Plan—a collaboration between the EBRD and the Dushanbe City Administration—for example, is likely to give greater prominence to sustainable mobility and transport, while EBRD’s preferred process is more transparent and open than the city’s usual political systems which, according to the stakeholders, can be “opaque”.

This begins to suggest a possible future formulation of sustainable mobility planning for Dushanbe’s residential areas where an institutionalized planning practice has been established at the municipal level, but which is open to collaboration. Although Dushanbe’s Green City Action Plan process—as required by the EBRD partnership—has, to date, included outreach to the city’s private sector, academia, and non-governmental organizations, it has yet to include grassroots partnerships with EASST, YGT, and their community partners, advocates, and activists. Among other benefits to this possible broadened dialogue, is the opening of conversations around the loss of cognitively important landmarks and venues of shared communal memory associated with the rapid, and seemingly non-judicious removal of Soviet-era fabric.

“It is important what came to us from our good Soviet past, something that contains history… [But] unfortunately, [public participation is currently] very low and they do not take an active part in the life of the city, or at least their voice can’t be heard.”

- Young Generation of Tajikistan Staff Member

“As far as I am aware, there is very little formal community engagement or public participation. There is no opportunity and channels for public participation, and they are not often consulted. In some instances, stakeholder engagement is carried out but this is usually conducted poorly, often by international consultants with little understanding of who the local stakeholders are, or it’s done after the fact. Certainly not in the planning and design stages.”

- Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport Staff Member

Reflecting on the storytelling and drawing workshops, the EASST and YGT stakeholders believed that this mode of engagement through a creative experience could make a valid and important contribution to a shift in the planning and design of pedestrian and cyclist provision in Dushanbe.

“The workshop engagement could ensure that the community is part of a planning and decision-making process of a project, and that their values, needs, and wants are being reflected in what’s constructed and planned around them.”

- Young Generation of Tajikistan Staff Member

“[The workshops were] the first time anything like this has been done in Tajikistan. The workshops have given participants the opportunity and encouragement to think about road issues from a completely new perspective. My hope is that it has given them a new understanding of what road safety means, and given them the confidence to understand a systems approach, and to envisage how things could be if vulnerable road users were prioritized and the needs of local road users were considered in the design process. I hope it has encouraged them to not just accept the status quo of “more roads”, and think about the need to update local road standards.”

- Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport Staff Member

The final quote above, suggests that the interviewed stakeholders believe that the workshop format not only identified mobility challenges for non-auto movement, but could also be a creative experience approach of notable consequence that provides a community-engagement legacy of ‘reflective individuals’ and ‘engaged citizens’ that could contribute to, and reflect a healthy cultural ecology for Dushanbe (Figure 14.)

4. Discussion

Dushanbe, the capital city of one of Central Asia’s poorest countries, Tajikistan, has a poor record of road accidents and fatalities. This study corroborates the extant, official documentation of this regrettable situation, with pedestrians and cyclists directly reporting feelings of marginalization and threat due to the behaviors of motorists, and through being underserved in terms of dedicated safe infrastructure in urban districts and residential areas. This study’s findings suggest that the poor consideration of pedestrian and cycle infrastructure in Dushanbe is particularly pernicious in its inequality towards the city’s younger inhabitants, lower socioeconomic groups, and others with less choice in how they navigate the city. Beyond considerations of carbon reliance, the lack of non-auto movement options in the city also inhibits the well-being of such individuals, and their opportunities to form meaningful perceptual, physical, and community connections as they traverse neighborhoods and districts by foot or by bicycle.

While this study suggests that regional and international vehicular mobility is a broadly accepted facet of Dushanbe’s and Tajikistan’s ongoing post-Soviet transition towards a connected, global twenty-first century, the rapid pace of roadbuilding within the city and its neighborhoods has accelerated the amount of space and speeds accessible to vehicular movement, without a concomitant consideration for those without access to cars. This suggests the need for a more nuanced model of transit and movement for Dushanbe, where the primacy of vehicles, freight, and carbon reliance is stepped down across a transect of geographical units from the international region, the nation, the sub-region or catchment, the city itself, the district, and the neighborhood. At these increasingly localized levels, there might be an increasingly clear rationale and scope for more carbon-responsible transit choices, including less travel and non-auto options that resonate with the decarbonization of Tajikistan’s national energy portfolio and improved qualities of hybridized working/residential areas.

More work is needed to understand the most effective and locally appropriate policies, planning apparatus, and design codes and approaches that could facilitate a stepping-down in auto-reliance within Dushanbe’s residential areas. Specifically, the relationship between roadbuilding, car ownership, and a sense of post-Soviet identity in Dushanbe requires greater understanding, if public opinion around personal freedoms and rights, is to be properly addressed within a general move towards greater provision of non-auto options. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the provision of well-designed, connected, convivial, and dedicated pedestrian and cycle infrastructure is an immediate priority for landscape and urban design in Dushanbe’s residential districts.

Whatever models for best practice prove to be the most acceptable and effective, the current bias towards traffic movement and car use within Dushanbe is strongly misaligned with Tajikistan’s stated green recovery goals of renewable energy, and a progressive, digital economy. Furthermore, the current lack of consideration for pedestrians and cyclists in residential areas prohibits the city’s ability to truly enact a transition towards smart neighborhoods that are emerging elsewhere in the post-socialist world [19,20,21,22,23,24].

In exemplar locations such as Novi Sad, Serbia, and Skopje, North Macedonia, conceptions of housing as expansive monocultures are being phased out through demolition, and construction of mixed-use building fabric, with interstitial spaces and infrastructure that supports non-auto use [21,22,23,24]. This kind of reconceptualization of the post-Soviet residential landscape resonates more strongly with Tajikistan’s green recovery objectives than the modes of rapid, car-dominated redevelopment currently practiced in Dushanbe. Furthermore, the successful redevelopment of Skopje suggests that socialist-era fabric, where it aligns with contemporary development goals, is being integrated with future planning and design [23]. The current work suggests that, in Dushanbe, this is not the case, and the rapid pace of urbanization and roadbuilding is seeing the indiscriminate removal of Soviet infrastructure and landmarks; fabric that might have otherwise provided an appropriate armature for a more sympathetic and navigable reimagining of the city.

Within the frame of sustainable landscape and urban designs of reduced traffic fatalities, lower-carbon lifestyles, and balanced economic, societal, and environmental objectives, case studies of successful redevelopment scenarios in post-Soviet and socialist cities consistently point to the need for authentic community action in the delivery of more sustainable residential development [21,22,24]. More specifically, Novi Sad and Skopje have an institutionalized, well-structured, and legitimatized sustainable mobility planning practice at the municipal level and, crucially, civil society actors such as NGOs, activists, and local community groups, to ensure that policies and projects remain user-friendly and in the domain of public interest and public good [21,23,24]. Dushanbe’s recent inclusion in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Green Cities program promises the possibility of improved non-auto planning at the municipal level, and the partnership of the Eastern Alliance of Safe and Sustainable Transport, and the Young Generation of Tajikistan, has the potential to provide the necessary grassroots level of community engagement and activism. However, this study suggests that these two levels of agency—the municipality and the community—have yet to engage around the pressing challenges of Dushanbe’s non-auto mobility.

However, in the small literature around the emergence of healthier pedestrian and cycling cultures in transitional post-Soviet/socialist cities such as Novi Sad, and Skopje, and across whole nations such as Ukraine and Lithuania, there is little reported on the state of public participation as a tactic for better non-auto design and planning. While Mrkajić & Anguelovski [20] report the tier of public activism and advocacy as a necessary counterpoint to municipal actions in Novi Sad—which might, in a sense, serve as an exemplar for Dushanbe—they also describe that city’s grassroots action as that of reaction and correction to municipal actions after the fact (such as protests, demonstrations, and calls for culpability), rather than that of proactivity in the planning and design of projects (ibid). This current paper seems, therefore, to make a rare contribution to understanding the public engagement strategies that might be employed proactively to creatively guide the future of transitional cities and neighborhoods. Based on the outputs of the workshops, and the opinions of established stakeholders in Dushanbe, the use of drawings and storytelling might be a robust and replicable method of public engagement through a creative experience that combines joy and exchange of ideas with the possibility of citizen-agency and consequence. However, the work presented here represents the first attempt to bring drawing and storytelling approaches to public engagement in Dushanbe, and some limitations should be addressed by further work to strengthen and enrich this method of public engagement.

Although the age, gender, and life stage (student, working age, retired) of the workshop participants were gathered to provide a descriptive sense of the study contributors, no attempt was made to quantify or formulate responses to fit an ordinal scale, or differentiate between demographic groups. Further work that addresses possible relationships between the veracity and effectiveness of the storytelling and drawing approaches and demographic variables, might clarify its effectiveness as a method of engagement, especially given the suggestion that car ownership and mobility might have a complicated relationship with the community and individual sense of identity, and aspirations. Certainly, work on community engagement methods through creative experiences undertaken elsewhere [45] has pointed to the very approachability of these techniques, as an opportunity to engage with, and then compare the thoughts and ideas of, different demographic groups, such as age and professional background, and there is clear scope to enrich the current study in this regard.

While the drawing and storytelling workshops avoid the complexity and technical difficulties of the online, collaborative methods reported by Poplin [46], there are similar challenges and weaknesses shared by that study and this current paper. Both lack a robust reporting of the character of the participants’ experiences, which is such an important aspect of engagement through creative experiences. Elsewhere, researchers have undertaken surveys as part of their creative experience projects, that report either quantitatively, or qualitatively, public participant satisfaction and experience to better understand the replicability of their methods [51,53]. This is an additional aspect of possible improvement for the techniques reported here. The Poplin paper and this article are also lacking a sense of the best, most impactful use for the creative work of public participants and, certainly, integration of creative experience methods and outcomes into Dushanbe’s planning and design procedures should be a vital component of the testing of locally efficacious methods for the ongoing re-shaping of the city’s residential areas.

The question around the legacy of the workshops relates, not just to the drawings and stories, but also to the sensibilities and agency inculcated within the participants themselves. As pointed out by Pstross et al. [49], community engagement outcomes through creative experiences may have a finite window of relevance and resonance. So, while the surveyed stakeholders reported that the workshop method has the potential to contribute to a legacy of community investment and ownership around the issue of non-auto neighborhood mobility, there would be a benefit in further longitudinal research work, around the legacy of storytelling and drawing workshop participation, and its contribution to the nurturing of a cultural ecology of reflective individuals and engaged citizens in Dushanbe.

5. Conclusions

This study occurs at an important juncture in the urban trajectory of Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital city. Through a combination of intertwined global, regional, national, and local circumstances, there are clear motivations to consider the future of this rapidly growing city. There is now a fascinating question as to how Dushanbe might align with global and national green recovery objectives of decarbonization and social equity; respond to the regional transition away from the urban concepts of Soviet and socialist urban planning and design; and address quality of life among a young and increasingly globally aware urban population in a newly designated “Green City”. At the heart of this question lies the city’s future planning and design for mobility, not simply as a facet of economic necessity, but as an experienced part of inhabitants’ lifeworlds. This study reinforces that Dushanbe is not a safe place to walk or cycle and that, to date, planning and design in the city have given clear primacy to macroscale considerations of efficient regional and cross-city traffic movement. A shift is required towards a more enriched and nuanced consideration of movement at the mesoscale of neighborhoods and communities, and at the microscale of individual safety, sense of place, belonging, and satisfaction. This paper suggests that, although there are likely to be conflicting attitudes towards car ownership, owing in part to powerful associations with aspirant social status and self-identity, better non-auto infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists in Dushanbe is an immediate priority. Reconciliation and negotiation between viewpoints require a commitment to authentic public participation in planning and design, yet to date this is sorely lacking in Dushanbe, though this may change with the city’s recent Green City designation and the associated expectations of transparency and collaboration. The city already benefits from an established stratum of community activists and advocates for better non-auto provision. However, this must further develop to provide a critical forum and conduit for public attitudes to inform Dushanbe’s policymakers, officials, and planners, and, clearly, effective tools for authentic community engagement are required. This paper has demonstrated the possibilities of engaging with Dushanbe’s public through a creative experience of drawing and storytelling, and its potential to provide an authentic, grassroots foundation for planning and design for non-auto infrastructure. The method—though requiring further development—has been shown to be capable of providing evidence of spatial and visual, as well as somatic and perceptual impressions of mobility, and communicating the public’s ideas for future urban scenarios including safe, convenient, and sensorially rich non-auto transit infrastructure.