Experimenting with automated driving for technology or for the city? A matter of governance cultures

Urban experiments have been promoted as means to enable innovation for sustainability, particularly in urban mobility. Yet, they have been criticized for struggling to stimulate broader transformations, as they often are detached from public-value principles, lack embeddedness in the cities' everyday realities and are industry-oriented. How cultural changes on different governance levels intersect to produce urban experiments with transformative potential has received little attention. This paper focuses on how urban experiments are co-created with broader governance cultures in multiple governance levels, and what the implications of this co-creation are for urban transformation. We provide a theoretical background on the interrelations between governance cultures and urban experimentation, and the debate on urban experimentation within Science and Technology Studies, transition/innovation studies and urban studies to identify the main barriers for urban transformation. We, then, present our methodology consisting of the case study selection of the multi-level governance nexus State-Region-City in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, our data collection with interviews and documents, and the analytical tool of storylines to capture the co-production of governance cultures and urban experiments. We continue with the analysis of the case study of automated driving experimentation with the concept of storylines. Our findings show that urban experiments are more likely to lead to urban transformation when the local public sector has a strong role in governance processes, and when experiments emerge through deliberation on daily urban problems and policy agendas. When governance processes are mainly led by state and industry actors who prioritize testing technologies as universal and scalable byproducts, it is less likely for urban experiments to lead to urban transformation. Finally, we discuss when urban experimentation advances technology per se and when it adds public value and advances sustainability, arguing for a co-existence of different kinds of urban experiments. We conclude with future research and policy implications

Data, AI and governance in MaaS – Leading to sustainable mobility?

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is regarded as key innovation for sustainable mobility, with data and AI playing a central role. This paper explores the nexus of data-AI-governance in MaaS to understand in how far sustainability is addressed. While the role of data and AI is covered by technical literature, and governance by social science literature, these discussions remain largely separate in MaaS. This paper aims to redress this issue through an interdisciplinary narrative literature review that brings together these literature sets. The research question is: How does the data-AI-governance nexus in MaaS give rise to hybrid forms of governance between humans and algorithms and what are the implications for sustainable mobility? Results show that: (1) The data collection and processing that is crucial to MaaS, might reproduce socio-political inequalities. (2) AI-driven customisation and nudging of end-user demand ignores rebound effects, that can only be avoided if sustainability objectives are central. (3) Inadequate integration of mobility service supply might exacerbate mobility challenges. (4) When mobility system optimisation through AI becomes more widespread, MaaS platforms might become a form of algorithmic governance. (5) Whether sustainability can be reached, depends on how and by whom (sustainability) objectives of algorithms will be decided. The paper concludes that hybrid governance for sustainability requires close collaboration between policymakers and industry players and acknowledging AI algorithms as important non-human actors. The paper contributes to conceptual debates on sustainability and data/AI, governance and data/AI in MaaS and beyond, and to policymaking on aligning platform systems with sustainability

What is Interdisciplinarity in Practice? Critical Reflections on Doing Mobility Research in an Intended Interdisciplinary Doctoral Research Group

Lately, there has been a tendency in academia to call for more interdisciplinary research on sustainable mobility. However, there is a lack of empirical research on practiced interdisciplinarity. This paper seeks to address this by exploring the practices of an intended interdisciplinary doctoral research group. Specifically, it presents the study of a collaborative autoethnography using individual vignettes and qualitative data analysis. The results classify the identified interdisciplinary practices into three main categories: Interactions, productive processes, and negotiation processes, where interactions serve as a carrier for negotiation and productive processes. This also uncovers advantages and challenges associated with these interactions. Furthermore, the analysis reveals intersubjectivity as an important component of the infrastructure of interdisciplinarity involved in both processes. Finally, we call for a reevaluation of the hierarchical thinking about the different levels of interdisciplinarity, going from disciplinary to multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary research. We conclude that for interdisciplinarity to happen in practice, it requires having a combination of various disciplines, ontologies, and a common “wicked” problem to solve. We also find that developing an interdisciplinary research environment requires researchers to embark on a shared journey of reaching a higher level of intersubjectivity through continuous interactions and discussions, while also negotiating conflicts

What is Interdisciplinarity in Practice? Critical Reflections on Doing Mobility Research in an Intended Interdisciplinary Doctoral Research Group

Lately, there has been a tendency in academia to call for more interdisciplinary research on sustainable mobility. However, there is a lack of empirical research on practiced interdisciplinarity. This paper seeks to address this by exploring the practices of an intended interdisciplinary doctoral research group. Specifically, it presents the study of a collaborative autoethnography using individual vignettes and qualitative data analysis. The results classify the identified interdisciplinary practices into three main categories: Interactions, productive processes, and negotiation processes, where interactions serve as a carrier for negotiation and productive processes. This also uncovers advantages and challenges associated with these interactions. Furthermore, the analysis reveals intersubjectivity as an important component of the infrastructure of interdisciplinarity involved in both processes. Finally, we call for a reevaluation of the hierarchical thinking about the different levels of interdisciplinarity, going from disciplinary to multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary research. We conclude that for interdisciplinarity to happen in practice, it requires having a combination of various disciplines, ontologies, and a common “wicked” problem to solve. We also find that developing an interdisciplinary research environment requires researchers to embark on a shared journey of reaching a higher level of intersubjectivity through continuous interactions and discussions, while also negotiating conflicts