Speaker
Description
Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) are strategic planning tools designed to satisfy mobility needs in cities and their surroundings for a better quality of life. According to the European Commission, “A SUMP offers a comprehensive, vision-led, flexible and resilient approach by serving as a long-term mobility plan that includes packages of measures addressing short-term objectives and targets the reaching of which can be fast-tracked in response to changing needs.” (EUR-Lex - 32023H0550 – EN). However, the capacity of SUMPs and other similar mobility planning instruments in bringing about effective changes towards more sustainable and just mobility practices has been questioned (Maltese, Gatta and Marcucci, 2021; Wågsæther et al., 2022; Hidayati and Tan, 2025). Aiming to shed light on the matter, this paper comparatively examines the multilevel governance framework of sustainable urban mobility planning across Europe, through the analysis of 8 case studies from the JUST STREETS project. We start from the assumption that in order to understand the effectiveness of SUMPs it is necessary to consider them as part of a spatial governance and planning system (SGPS), i.e. a complex and multidimensional interaction among the urban legal framework (i.e. structure), the tools for spatial planning (among which the SUMPs), the practices, and the discourses built around them (Berisha et al., 2021). This interaction shapes and determines the possibility for SUMPs to improve urban mobility towards more sustainable and just mobility practices. By combining literature, policy and document analysis, the paper reviews the multilevel frameworks in which SUMPs are developed and implemented, from the European to the local scale. First, the interaction between the urban legal framework (structure) and the SUMP (tools) is inquired. Then, the lens is brought closer to practices, focusing on one local case study from the JUST STREETS project. The mutual interactions between the SUMP, emerging sustainable and just mobility practices , and rising discourses on sustainable and just urban mobility is carried out. Overall, the paper sheds light on the possibility of SUMPs as a catalyst for transformative practices (Albrechts, 2017) actually contributing to mobility justice, and the room for improvement in this respect.
References
Albrechts, L. (2017) ‘Strategic Planning as a Catalyst for Transformative Practices’, in Encounters in Planning Thought. Routledge.
Berisha, E. et al. (2021) ‘Spatial governance and planning systems in the public control of spatial development: a European typology’, European Planning Studies, 29(1), pp. 181–200. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2020.1726295.
Hidayati, I. and Tan, W. (2025) ‘Assessing justice in sustainable mobility transitions: narratives from transport policies in Jakarta’, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 0(0), pp. 1–13. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2025.2452923.
Maltese, I., Gatta, V. and Marcucci, E. (2021) ‘Active Travel in Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans. An Italian overview’, Research in Transportation Business & Management, 40, p. 100621. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2021.100621.
Wågsæther, K. et al. (2022) ‘The justice pitfalls of a sustainable transport transition’, Environment and Planning F, 1(2–4), pp. 187–206. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/26349825221082169.
| Keywords | SUMP; Multilevel governance; mobility justice; JUST STREETS |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
