Speaker
Description
Disrupting everyday routines, street experiments are meant to initiate public debates and often provoke contestation among residents(Klaever et al., 2024; Verlinghieri et al., 2024). Thus, they contribute to how discourses on urban mobility transition evolve and how they influence planning and policy making. Several works on discourses on urban mobility transition showed that they mostly stabilize existing truth regimes, that is, car-oriented traffic (Hickman, 2025). They were analyzed by if and how knowledge promoting car-centered mobility is reproduced and by whom and who benefits from this. Challenging the status quo, street experiments often provoke contestation. While the conflictual character of street experiments is increasingly investigated (Domann & Schmiz, 2023; te Boveldt et al., 2023), there is a research gap in studies that focus on street experiments and consider the plurality of actor perspectives and how they are depicted in reports on street experiments. So far, the evolvement of how discursive practices in response to street experiments are (or are not) reproduced by media remains overlooked.
To close this gap, this study presents a discourse analysis on street experiments in Munich of the project AQT (German acronym for “car-reduced neighborhoods for a liveable city). AQT was chosen as a case study because it was a transdisciplinary Real-world Laboratory (RwL) in which multiple street experiments were conducted, initiating conflicts first at the neighborhood level and later escalating to the town hall. The project has been widely reported at local to national scales in different media. The broad media attention makes this case study interesting for investigating how negotiations are perceived in public and what implications they might have for planning urban transitions. In this light, this study analyzes newspaper reports on the case, asking (1) what aspects of street experiments are considered, and (2) how statements of different stakeholders were reproduced by the media.
This work draws on Keller’s Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD), examining how different forms of knowledge are socially related and how knowledge is situated within the context of discourse (Keller, 2011). We analyze speakers' statements about street experiments that are quoted in the articles. For this, we concentrate on residents and policymakers, within which we distinguish between local politicians and the administrative bodies, whose activities influence political decision-making (Bogumil & Jann, 2020). To structure the qualitative content analysis, the study applies the adapted street experiment value framework, which was developed to assess the impact of spatial changes on residents' experiences (Smeds & Papa, 2023). It includes two categories: ‘Mobility’ and ‘Public life’, and proposes five dimensions (functional, social, safety, economic, environmental) to describe how residents experienced the spatial features of street experiments. The framework was extended by the category ‘Process’, as criticism of street experiments frequently points out weaknesses in the process (Grandel & Berger, 2025; Zhao & Sun, 2025).
The sample includes articles from the beginning of the AQT project in 2022 until February 2026. The search for digital and analog articles was conducted in the databases Nexis, Google News, and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung Archive (a regional newspaper). In the preliminary analysis, articles were classified by their characteristics: audience, frequency, and format/style (Neuberger & Kapern, 2013). After deduplication, the sample for the qualitative content analysis contained n = 68 articles. A deductive-inductive approach was applied for the qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2016). To understand which topics related to street experiments were considered (and which were not), deductive codes based on the adapted street experiment value framework (Smeds & Papa, 2023; Authors, under review). After a first review of the included articles and a pretest of codes, the articles were coded using MAXQDA software. The coded segments were structured by the most frequent topics and speakers, and then put in chronological order. Thereby, we describe prevalent topics, the speakers' quoted statements, and their shifts over time.
The sample for the qualitative content analysis consists mostly of online articles and n = 16 (24 %) printed articles. Most articles were published by tabloid press (n = 45, 66%). Particularly, the reports of the tabloid with the highest circulation in Germany stood out with polarizing articles and mainly negative quotes from residents. Content-wise, the focus of the reports shifted over time. Initially, the reports focused on spatial changes, additional mobility services, and new forms of use. In the middle of the project’s runtime, conflicts and critical voices became more frequent. In the retrospective articles, the criticism on the process or the reduction of available street space for cars remained in focus. The findings show that speakers are considered in an imbalanced manner. While spokespersons of administration or politics frequently considered residents’ interests, residents’ statements were rare in the articles, most of which were mainly critical, focusing on the repurposing of parking or user conflicts. Politicians' polarizing comments were frequently quoted in the first half of the project. The reports linked the critique of the project to other political debates that took place at that time. While being a partner of the project, the administration - even though often criticized by residents and politicians – did not speak publicly, with few exceptions, in response to press inquiries.
The discursive practices of actors and project activities with high news value set the focus and the tone of reports. The news value taxonomy proposed by Harcup & O’Neill (2017, p. 1482) offers possible explanations: ‘conflict’, ’surprise’, ‘negativity’ and other indicators made the disruptive and conflicting AQT project an attractive object for reports. While the potential impact on public life is examined from various angles, impact on mobility is mainly highlighted by the disadvantages for car owners. Even though the street experiments were well accepted among residents (MCube AQT et al. 2024; Kellhammer et al. 2023), the positive outcome of the project remained overseen in reports and was not promoted in the same extend to reports on the conflict. The focus on critical voices sustained the impression of a majority objecting to street space reallocations and mobility transition. We propose adopting a more positive understanding of conflict, acknowledging pluralism, and treating street experiments as spaces for dialogue and negotiation.
References
MCube AQT, Adamidis, F., Aumann, S., Herbst, T., Kellhammer, M., Schmidt, M., Schreibmüller, J., Zeckau, B., Mahfoud, V., Preiß, S., & Selednikov, I. (2024). Autoreduzierte Quartiere für eine lebenswerte Stadt – Ergebnisse aus dem Forschungsprojekt aqt (L. M. LHM & T. U. M. TUM, Eds).
Bogumil, J., & Jann, W. (2020). Verwaltung und Verwaltungswissenschaft in Deutschland: Eine Einführung. Springer Fachmedien. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-28408-4
Domann, V., & Schmiz, A. (2023). Bridging Fractures – New Localism as Heuristic and Means to Productively Transform Conflicts? Raumforschung und Raumordnung = Spatial research and planning, 81(5), 557–571. https://doi.org/10.18452/28293
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language | Alexander Street, part of Clarivate. Pantheon Books.
Grandel, G., & Berger, M. (2025). Pathways from street experiments to transformation: A systematic review of theories of change. Transport Reviews, 0(0), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/01441647.2025.2523282
Harcup, T., & O’Neill, D. (2017). What is News?: News values revisited (again). Journalism Studies, 18(12), 1470–1488. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1150193
Harriet Dunn. (2024). Populism, Planning, and the Politics of Discontent. Planning Theory & Practice, 0(0), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2024.2437987
Hickman, R. (2025). Discourses on Sustainable Urban Mobility. UCL PRESS. https://uclpress.co.uk/book/discourses-on-sustainable-urban-mobility/
Keller, R. (2011). Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse: Grundlegung eines Forschungsprogramms (3rd edn). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften / Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden.
Kellhammer, M., Schmidt, M., Adamidis, F., Aumann, S., Boucsein, B., Herbst, T., Preiß, S., & Ruf, S. (2025). Capturing complexity – applying and reflecting on the case reporting scheme in a real-world laboratory on car-reduced neighborhoods in Munich. Urban Transformations, 7(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42854-025-00080-y
Klaever, A., Goetting, K., & Jarass, J. (2024). Conflicts in real-world labs ‐ Perspectives of critical and ambivalent residents on a temporary public space redesign project in Berlin. GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 33(1), 72–79. https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.33.S1.11
Kuckartz, U. (2016). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse (3., überarbeitete Auflage). Beltz Juventa.
Marquet, O., Anguelovski, I., Nello-Deakin, S., & Honey-Rosés, J. (2024). Decoding the 15-Minute City Debate: Conspiracies, Backlash, and Dissent in Planning for Proximity. Journal of the American Planning Association, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2024.2346596
Neuberger, C., & Kapern, P. (2013). Grundlagen des Journalismus. Springer Fachmedien. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-94191-2
Smeds, E., & Papa, E. (2023). The value of street experiments for mobility and public life: Citizens’ perspectives from three European cities. Journal of Urban Mobility, 4, 100055. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urbmob.2023.100055
te Boveldt, G., De Wilde, L., Keseru, I., & Macharis, C. (2023). Pedestrianisation as a step in a societal transformation? An analysis of support and opposition in Brussels. Cities, 143, 104577. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2023.104577
VanHoose, K., de Gante, A. R., Bertolini, L., Kinigadner, J., & Büttner, B. (2022). From temporary arrangements to permanent change: Assessing the transitional capacity of city street experiments. Journal of Urban Mobility, 2, 100015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urbmob.2022.100015
Verlinghieri, E., Vitale Brovarone, E., & Staricco, L. (2024). The conflictual governance of street experiments, between austerity and post-politics. Urban Studies, 61(5), 878–899. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231193860
WMO. (2026). State of the Global Climate 2025 (1242). World Meteorological Organization. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.59327/WMO/S/CRI/SOC1
Zhao, K. J., & Sun, G. (2025). Beyond temporary measures: How experiential learning in street experiments shapes urban mobility transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 57, 101007. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2025.101007