Stakeholders’ Views on Multimodal Urban Mobility Futures: A Matter of Policy Interventions or Just the Logical Result of Digitalization?

It is widely acknowledged that strategies to decarbonize energy systems cannot omit the mobility sector. For several decades, particularly in urban areas, a shift from car-based mobility to more environmental-friendly modes has been high on political agendas. Progress has been made in many urban areas, but so far only in small, rather incremental steps. The dominance of the car has remained largely stable in urban transport. For some time now, many experts have argued that processes of digitalization will co-evolve with societal trends and lead to multimodal urban mobility regimes in which private car usage will lose its dominance. In this paper, we examine if stakeholders active in the field believe that, despite digitalization, policy interventions are essential to achieve such a transition. The analysis draws on concepts from transition research and is based on 10 semi-structured interviews with providers of innovative mobility services that may contribute to more multimodal urban mobility systems. Geographical focus is on the City of Stuttgart (Germany). Results indicate broad agreement amongst the interviewees that digitalization alone is not sufficient for achieving a full-scale transition towards multimodal urban mobility. Policy measures that restrict car-based mobility would also be needed. However, many of the interviewed actors doubt that the essential policy mixes will find the necessary political and societal acceptance. Finally, the paper indicates ways to overcome this dilemma

Using the Capability Approach as a normative perspective on energy justice: Insights from two case studies on digitalisation in the energy sector

This paper explores how the Capability Approach (CA) can enrich the concept of energy justice by assessing the impact of two cases of digitalisation in the energy sector. Digitalisation promises technical solutions to pressing challenges in the energy sector such as climate change and fossil fuel scarcity. Current academic and popular discussions of these solutions are dominated by a techno-utopian ideal, which sometimes obscures complex ethical and social challenges. Furthermore, technology assessment in the energy sector often focuses on environmental and economic aspects of sustainability, while issues of energy justice or broader ethical concerns are often a low priority. In this paper, we explore whether Nussbaum’s version of the CA can be used as a systematic approach to the assessment of technological options that helps bring energy justice into the spotlight. Drawing on examples from two different areas of the energy system, namely, smart grids for the electricity sector and autonomous vehicles for the mobility sector, we demonstrate that the CA provides a normative framework that allows for aspects of individual deliberation and as such is well suited as a normative metric for the conception of energy justice in social science

Potential impacts of institutional dynamics on the development of automated vehicles: Towards sustainable mobility?

Most experts agree that automated vehicles (AV) will be commercialized sooner or later and that this will lead to far-reaching changes in the mobility system. However, it is still open whether these developments will lead to more sustainable transport systems. AVs may render private car ownership more attractive and therefore intensify car-oriented mobility patterns, or may increase the attractiveness of public transport when mostly used as robo-taxis. Once development has started to move in a specific direction, self-reinforcing dynamics and path-dependencies may unfold. Therefore, it is important to analyze which factors may influence the direction of path-dependencies. We argue that understanding emerging path-dependencies requires an understanding of the interrelated technical, economic and societal dynamics. We draw on recent insights into societal dynamics in sociotechnical regimes, drawn from sustainability transition research, to identify potential development trajectories of automated driving due to changes in what is conceptualized as normative-cognitive institutions. We introduce an approach to map such institutional dynamics based on recent data from developments in the German mobility sector. Results demonstrate that the direction of future AV pathways may depend on such institutional developments. Both a reinforcing and a disruptive pathway are plausible. Governance strategies that aim to tap the potential of AVs in supporting sustainable urban mobility should consider institutional dynamics more explicitly