MUV Deliverable 2.1 – Project Vision and Research Framework: Horizon 2020 - Mobility Urban Values (MUV)

Sustainable mobility goals at the urban scale have shifted the public attention from infrastructure management within urban structure (the hardware) to mobility management as travel behaviour (the software). This has implied a paradigm shift from rational to participative and diffuse urban planning and design disciplines: changes in urban mobility are no longer understood as issues for expert-driven transport engineers alone but instead new methods are needed to generate co-created and more people- centred solutions, methods that enable citizens and raise their awareness about the impact of their travel behaviour on issues of urban livability and sustainability. Goals as reducing car-mobility in urban centres and visioning a post-car future society are therefore not just referring to an expert utopia. Many initiatives towards mobility low-carbon choices and the shaping of new societal mobility values are indeed nowadays already changing the ‘street level’ in some European cities: there is a desire from society to move towards a long term radical change for more sustainable and liveable cities. The interplay among hard infrastructural planning and soft practices of social innovation in the field of urban mobility are urgent to address.