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A conversation about mobility transitions with Dr Anna Nikolaeva, Assistant Professor of Urban Mobility Futures at the University of Amsterdam.
It’s difficult to find a politician or city planner who won’t agree that mobility needs to transition toward something greener, particularly in and around our urban centres. But how we’ll do that — in the near term while still providing vital transportation for the general public — is a much more complex question. Anna and her academic partners have been exploring a new policy framework for considering mobility not as an individual right, but as a common good that should be treated and governed accordingly.
We spoke with Anna about the underlying politics of mobility transitions, and how this new paradigm of ‘mobility as a commons’ could lay the foundations for a more sustainable and socially-just future of mobility.
Sure. A few years ago my colleagues and I worked on a very big global comparative study where we travelled to many countries all over the world and looked at their national mobility transition policies — what actions were governments around the world taking to improve the quality of their transportation systems?
We were quite surprised not to find many signs of transitions to low-carbon or inclusive mobility, despite a lot of understanding — especially at the city and street level — of the need for more sustainable and socially-just mobilities.
At the same time, and for different reasons, I began reading a book about ‘commons’, and immediately realised that I’d found a beautiful alternative to this narrative of mobility, and especially the future of mobility, that it will be perfect and individual and unlimited and seamless. That didn’t make sense for us as mobility researchers. Rather, we were trying to push an understanding of mobility that is something which is essential, social, shared, and in need of being considered as a public good, and governed accordingly. The idea of the commons seemed to fit that perfectly.
‘Mobility as a commons’ is about understanding how we shape each other’s lives and communities through our choices about mobility.
A commons can be basically anything material or immaterial that has value for society or a community. The most conventional examples of commons are land, water, air — but it can also be something intangible, like culture, or language. It’s an alternative approach to considering value or ownership over a common resource that respects the shared reliance of a group of people on that resource.
If you look at the history of automobility, it has always been considered unlimited in the sense that we could achieve this perfect individual mobility. But that could never be achieved; it’s not unlimited, it’s a luxury. André Gorz wrote in 1973 that nobody says that if everybody wants to have a luxury villa on the seashore we should all have it, because the shore’s limited, and actually if everybody would have a villa there, the seashore as we want to see and experience it wouldn’t exist. This concept applies to private automobility.
So ‘mobility as a commons’ is a way to provide a very different type of story about mobility — a different frame of mobility as something shared. It’s about understanding how we shape each other’s lives and communities through our choices about mobility.
We’re trying to push an understanding of mobility that is something which is essential, social, shared, and in need of being considered as a public good, and governed accordingly.
When we looked at transportation policy all over the world what really struck us was that this logic of scarcity was somehow everywhere — not having enough space, oil, money, time — and how it was used to make decisions based on austerity, which, like financial austerity, tend to distribute the consequences of scarcity in a socially-problematic way. A typical example of mobility austerity projects is public transit routes being cut from communities which are already under-serviced, which inevitably creates, or exacerbates, inequalities.
We developed this idea of ‘mobility as a commons’ as an alternative response to the logic of scarcity — one that collectively reconsiders the societal value of mobility, and rethinks the ways in which mobility is performed and governed.
By reconsidering its societal value, we mean understanding the role of mobility as what keeps communities connected and diverse — the means through which we interact with each other and the environment around us. And by rethinking the ways that mobility is performed and governed, we mean the development of projects that highlight the shared responsibility for what mobility does to societies and communities, and, consequently, regarding mobility as something we share and should collectively govern.
The future of mobility is a collaborative future, it’s a future where everybody needs to contribute and many parties need to be involved.
Public transport from the origins had this idea that we all as a society should pitch in to create a functioning mobility system. Now, of course, we see a lot of privatization of public transport, austerity policies and so forth, and at least in Western countries a degradation of public transport. There are unfortunately some failings, but at its core, public transport could be considered a commons — a public resource that people collectively depend on.
State and public institutions definitely need to take their role as initiators or facilitators of the commons, because historically they have been well-positioned to necessitate transitions, to regulate, and to provide the means to redistribute resources.
We see with the platform economy some local governments trying to take more active roles, so I would expect that with the future of mobility. However, mobility is still somehow this technical matter that is outsourced to engineers, and I’m afraid that the governments are not necessarily jumping into that role of anticipating the potential negative consequences of driverless cars or smart mobility and so forth.
In terms of the private sector, I certainly think they can be partners in commoning projects. They are also well-positioned in a way with their resources and skills and expertise, and in a sense, they can provide alternatives to existing solutions, especially if they partner up with other societal stakeholders. For me, it’s a question about roles, because I really see this future as collaborative — the future of mobility is a collaborative future, it’s a future where everybody needs to contribute and many parties need to be involved.