Definition
A simple definition of sustainable mobility is “traveling with the least possible impact upon the planet”. This suggests a hierarchy of preferable transport, from fuel-free “active” walking and cycling, down to private jet-flying or superyacht sailing. The “sustainable mobility paradigm” is more specifically related to policymaking and priorities and closely reflects the “A-S-I” hierarchy in recent sustainability studies: Avoid (travel demand and car ownership); Shift (travel to the most sustainable modes); Improve (efficiency of individual modes). Addressing the impacts of car driving and flying is now viewed as a particularly key concern.
History
The first major policy definition of “sustainable mobility” is from the 1992 European Union Green Paper on the Impact of Transport on the Environment, which sought to “enable transport to fulfill its economic and social role while containing its harmful effects on the environment”. Sustainable mobility thus includes freight, although the most focus has been on passenger transport. Sustainable mobility has a long history subsumed within broad discussions of sustainable development, but as climate change has increasingly dominated policy debates, carbon emissions have risen in importance. That, in turn, eclipsed other impacts of transportation, such as impacts on habitats, air quality, material mining and fossil fuel extraction, as well as road accidents or dividing communities by building roads.
Historically, research and policies for sustainable mobility focused on traffic and congestion. This scope evolved over time to include the “drivers” of individual mobility choices, both psychological and infrastructural (driving and flying), transport infrastructures, mobility systems. The scope has also widened to include the questions of trip purposes (commuting, daily mobility and active long distance leisure travel). The relatively recent shift in framing of why and how people chose transportation modes, from “behavior” to habit, necessity, or social practice shifted the focus of studies and policy options: from information provision and financial (dis)incentives (public transport subsidies, “smarter choices” promotion) to systemic solutions.
A 2019 review of the research literature (see Table 74.1) summarizes the evolution of the studies on impacts of transportation, breaking it up into five “generations” – The most recent interest in demand reduction (around the need to travel) represents the A in the A-S-I approach, and is closely related to “sufficiency” studies.
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Different Perspectives
The “Mobilities” paradigm, including a journal of the same name, extends consideration of mobilities beyond passenger transport to movement as a key characteristic of modern society. In comparison with the well-recognized “socio-technical systems” and multi-level perspectives, which view mobility systems as “regimes” of transport modes and infrastructures, systems of law and regulation, manufacture, fuel supply, and more, the Mobilities paradigm goes further. It includes anthropological and sociological concerns with culture, meaning and identities.
In a related approach, movement and mobility are now understood as driven by social norms. This draws attention to what ties people to car driving in particular, which is more complex than simply convenience and access, and includes, for example, geographies of car-friendly suburbs connected to ever-increasing highway networks, the teenage rite of passage of getting a driver’s license, the cultural landscape of media where cars and driving are linked with individualism, family life, and freedom (see Urban Planning and Spatial Allocation, Freedom of Choice, Choice Editing, Attitude-Behavior Gap). These insights reveal the multi-faceted challenge of encouraging people out of their cars into more sustainable modes of mobility.
Social practice theory (SPT) stresses attention to the materials, skills, and meanings that make up various mobility practices and how they are shared across society rather than being “in people’s heads”. This shifts the focus to how society coordinates shopping, education, leisure, and work in time and space. The concept of “Autonomobility” combines this more systemic understanding of sustainable mobility with the concerns of mobility justices – stressing that mobility systems should reconcile sustainability with the maximization of freedom, fairness, and fulfilling people’s mobility needs.
A “political economy” approach to (un)sustainable mobility ties together the critical study of several of the above aspects: systems of provision (including the powerful car, fossil fuel, and construction lobbies), mobility activities or practices, the energy needs and services being satisfied, and specific technologies involved (see Political Economy of Consumerism, Foundational Economy).
Flying and long-distance travel is currently drawing increasing attention, relative to the traditional emphasis on car driving, because of its very large carbon footprint. A recent analysis shows that 3% of plane trips account for 60% of distance traveled and 70% of respective carbon emissions (see Household Income Versus Carbon Footprint). There has also been a concern about second-order “rebound” effects as found in other energy research; urbanites drive less than country-dwellers in their daily lives but fly more, owing to their lifestyles and income (see Rebound Effects). This again raises the importance of the A-S-I hierarchy of policy approaches – to focus on Avoiding travel before Switching and Improving.
Application
This ever-broadening understanding of sustainable mobility explains the huge number of applications and policy solutions that have been suggested. Currently, the central concerns of the sustainable mobility paradigm remain: (i) reducing the need for short-distance travel through the use of Information and Communication Technology, telemedicine, or working from home; (ii) encouraging a modal shift to more sustainable modes (especially active modes such as walking and cycling, and public transport); (iii) reducing trip lengths through planning to shorten the distance between places of living, working, education, and so on (see the 15-minute-city concept; also Urban Planning and Spatial Allocation); and (iv) encouraging energy efficiency and carbon reduction (especially electrification, with a lesser focus on hydrogen and biofuels from plants). An earlier distinction between “hard” transport measures (i.e., building roads and installing bike paths) and “soft” ones (information, encouragement, subsidies) has been supplemented with a distinction between targeting individual free choices and “choice editing” by affecting the available options or systemic change (such as investment in public transport and planning policies) (see Green Nudging).
Car-free days or zones and “flight shame” exemplify developments, which could change social norms (see Social Tipping Points). But that is not enough. Tackling long-distance and non-commuting travel requires more systemic approaches, including a critical view of the role of the growing menu of options, infrastructures, and technology. These include airport sizes, number and variety of flights, road space for cars, and economic incentives (air miles, tax-exempt jet fuel, company car subsidies). Technological innovation studies stress the potential of drones, light electric vehicles, multi-modality (trips using multiple modes), mobility-as-a-service (purchasing mobility, not individual trips; see Product-Service Systems, Sharing Economy), and electric micro-mobility (e-bikes, e-cargo bikes, e-scooters, etc.). At the level of major infrastructure investment and planning, sustainable mobility requires a continuing shift from “predict and provide” to demand management; and from simplistic cost-benefit analysis focused time savings and convenience to considering all externalized costs to society, wildlife, biodiversity, and the climate.
Further Reading
Cass, N., & Manderscheid, K. (2010). Mobility justice and the right to immobility–from automobility to autonomobility. Presented at the Association of American Geographers Annual Conference, Washington, DC, April. Available at: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/219001/ (accessed: 8 January 2025).
Cass, N., & Manderscheid, K. (2018). The autonomobility system: Mobility justice and freedom under sustainability. In Mobilities, mobility justice and social justice. Routledge.
Holden, E., Gilpin, G., & Banister, D. (2019). Sustainable mobility at thirty. Sustainability, 11, 1965.
Kemp, R., & Rotmans, J. (2004). Managing the transition to sustainable mobility. In System innovation and the transition to sustainability: Theory, evidence and policy, pp. 137–167. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Mattioli, G., Roberts, C., Steinberger, J.K., & Brown, A. (2020). The political economy of car dependence: A systems of provision approach. Energy Research & Social Science, 66, 101486.
Rau, H., & Scheiner, J. (2020). Sustainable mobility: Interdisciplinary approaches. Sustainability, 12, 9995.