Speaker
Description
Introduction
Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans, commonly referred to as SUMP, have become an important policy instrument for promoting more sustainable urban mobility in the European Union. The SUMP framework was developed within European urban mobility policy to support integrated, strategic, and participatory planning across sectors, governance levels, and stakeholder groups, and has since become linked to broader climate-neutrality agendas. Collaboration is central to this framework: SUMP processes are expected to involve national and regional institutions, local authorities, stakeholders, and citizens.
Collaboration is also regarded as a fundamental component of sustainability transformation processes more generally, because such processes require coordination, dialogue, and joint decision-making across multiple actors and governance levels. However, collaboration requires more than the inclusion of multiple actors. It also depends on a sufficiently shared understanding of the problems being addressed, the goals being pursued, and the pathways through which change should occur, while also acknowledging competing perspectives. When collaborative processes fail to establish common ground, this can create challenges for subsequent implementation.
This is particularly challenging in the transport and mobility field, where understandings of transition and transformation remain conceptually blurred. The two concepts are often used together, and sometimes interchangeably, although they may imply different levels of ambition. Transition can refer to shifts within or between mobility systems, for example through modal shift, new services, infrastructure adaptation, or changes in user practices. Transformation, by contrast, can imply a deeper reorganisation of the structures, practices, and assumptions that reproduce unsustainable mobility. This conceptual ambiguity becomes practically relevant when it enters policy documents and planning processes.
If SUMP guidelines promote sustainable mobility change without clearly specifying whether this change is understood as transition or transformation, collaborating actors may interpret the same policy framework in different ways. The absence of an explicit intervention logic may contribute to implementation gaps because broad objectives must be translated into concrete local decisions. This is especially relevant when policy documents combine technological optimisation, modal shift, behavioural change, demand reduction, and spatial reorganisation without clearly defining how these forms of change relate to each other.
This study analyses how SUMP guidelines and related European mobility policy documents define the change to be pursued and what ambiguities emerge between different framings of change. It argues that SUMP documents promote collaboration and provide shared goals for sustainable mobility planning. However, they also combine different framings of change, including technological optimisation, transition-oriented modal shift, behavioural change, demand reduction, and transformation-oriented spatial reorganisation. These framings may complement each other, but they may also create ambiguity about the type, depth, and direction of change required. This ambiguity matters for collaborative planning because it can complicate the development of shared understanding among actors.
Conceptual framework
SUMP emerged as a European urban mobility planning framework in the context of the European Commission’s urban mobility policy. The concept was introduced in 2009 and further developed through the first SUMP guidelines, published in 2013, and a revised second edition in 2019. These guidelines provide cities with a structured process for preparing, planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating urban mobility plans. SUMP is therefore not only one document, but a broader planning framework consisting of core guidelines and related guidance documents for local and regional authorities and transport planners.
SUMP differs from conventional transport planning not only through its sustainability orientation, but also through its procedural principles. In traditional transport planning, demand is often understood as the expected amount of travel or traffic that a transport system needs to accommodate. The “predict and provide” paradigm therefore forecasts future traffic growth and responds by expanding transport infrastructure, often with a strong focus on private car use. In contrast, SUMP shifts attention from simply accommodating traffic demand towards improving accessibility, quality of life, safety, environmental performance, and the integration of different transport modes.
The guidelines stress cooperation across different governance levels, including local, regional, and national authorities, as well as the engagement of relevant stakeholders. What sets SUMP apart from more conventional planning approaches is therefore not only its focus on sustainable mobility outcomes, but also its emphasis on collaborative and participatory planning processes. At the same time, participation in SUMP is realised locally and is therefore highly context-dependent. Negotiations around urban mobility take place within specific institutional, political, spatial, and social contexts, which makes the participatory process debated and sometimes contested.
To analyse these interpretations, this study uses the concept of frames. Frames can be understood as shared cognitive worldviews that shape how actors interpret problems, identify possible solutions, and make sense of change. In this study, framing refers specifically to the way SUMP guidelines and related European mobility policy documents define sustainable mobility problems, identify solutions, prioritise forms of change, and make certain transition or transformation pathways appear more plausible or desirable than others. The focus is not on whether actors in SUMP processes actually develop shared understandings in practice, but on whether the documents provide a sufficiently coherent basis for collaborative planning.
The conceptual framework distinguishes between three framings of sustainable mobility change. The first is optimisation within the existing system, where change is framed as improving the performance, efficiency, or environmental quality of the current mobility system without clearly challenging its underlying organisation. The second is transition-oriented change, where change is framed as a shift within or between mobility systems, for example through modal shift, new mobility services, infrastructure adaptation, or changed user practices. These changes may enable transformation but do not necessarily address root causes from the outset. The third is transformation-oriented change, where change is framed as a fundamental rethinking or reorganisation of urban mobility, including demand reduction, spatial reorganisation, place-making, road-space redistribution, or active demand management.
In this study, transformation refers to change that addresses the structural conditions reproducing unsustainable mobility, such as car dependency, unequal accessibility, land-use patterns, and the allocation of urban space. Transformation can include incremental measures, but only where these measures are oriented towards long-term systemic reconfiguration rather than the optimisation of the existing mobility regime. For the analysis of SUMP documents, this distinction helps to examine whether sustainable mobility change is framed as improvement within existing mobility systems, as transition between mobility arrangements, or as a deeper transformation of the structures, practices, and assumptions that organise mobility.
Methods
The study conducts a qualitative document analysis of SUMP guidelines and selected European Commission mobility policy documents. The analysis is theory-informed and derived from the conceptual framework, particularly the distinction between optimisation within the existing system, transition, and transformation, as well as a separate temporal dimension of change. The analysis focuses on text segments in which the documents define urban mobility objectives, propose measures, or describe expected forms of change.
Qualitative document analysis provides a suitable method for this purpose because it allows for the structured examination and interpretation of textual material and other forms of information included in documents. Building on the framing perspective, the analysis treats policy documents as material through which framings of sustainable mobility change can be examined.
The empirical material consists of official SUMP guidelines alongside relevant European Commission communication documents published between 2005 and 2023. These documents were selected because they either constitute the SUMP guidelines themselves or form part of the wider European policy context in which the SUMP approach has been developed, revised, and positioned.
All documents were imported into MAXQDA and analysed through a deductive coding strategy. Each document was coded according to two dimensions; type of change, (distinguishing between optimisation within the existing system, transition, and transformation) and . temporality of change (distinguishing between slow or long-term, incremental, and fast or rapid change).
Results
The analysis shows that the documents do not present one coherent framing of sustainable mobility change. Instead, three framings coexist: optimisation within the existing system, transition-oriented change, and transformation-oriented change. These framings are not necessarily incompatible, but the documents do not always clarify how they relate to one another or which should be prioritised when tensions arise.
Transformation-oriented segments receive the least attention in both document groups, although they are slightly more prominent in the SUMP guidelines than in the European Commission communication documents. By contrast, optimisation within the existing system is much more frequent in the European Commission communication documents, suggesting a stronger emphasis on technological optimisation, clean vehicles, and efficiency-oriented change. Transition-oriented change is consistently strong in both groups, particularly through modal shift, integration, collective transport, and active mobility.
Three main ambiguities emerge from the analysis. First, the documents combine rapid deployment of technologies and infrastructures, incremental policy adjustments, and long-term visions of sustainable urban mobility. This creates temporal ambiguity when the speed of change is not clearly linked to the depth of change being pursued. Rapid change is often associated with technological optimisation, while incremental change can either improve the existing system or become transformative when linked to long-term systemic reconfiguration.
Second, the documents show modal ambiguity. They promote reducing reliance on private cars and shifting towards walking, cycling, and public transport, but later documents also include technological innovation, shared mobility, low- and zero-emission vehicles, automated mobility, and Mobility as a Service within the broader language of sustainable mobility. These approaches may complement each other, but the documents do not always clarify which modes should be prioritised when they compete for space, funding, or political attention.
Third, the documents show spatial ambiguity. The strongest transformation-oriented framing appears where mobility planning is connected to the reorganisation of urban space, including placemaking, road-space redistribution, and giving public space back to people. However, this framing coexists with measures that continue to accommodate mobility demand within the current spatial paradigm, such as charging infrastructure, shared mobility services, bike-sharing, and e-scooter systems. These measures may support sustainable mobility, but they also require urban space and may compete with efforts to reclaim space for pedestrians, cyclists, public transport, and public life.
Discussion and conclusion
The document analysis shows that SUMP guidelines and related European mobility policy documents contain multiple framings of sustainable mobility change. Technological optimisation, transition-oriented modal shift, behavioural change, and transformation-oriented spatial reorganisation can complement each other in practice. However, the documents do not always clarify how these framings should be prioritised, how they relate to one another, or what kind of transition or transformation they are expected to produce. This creates an interpretive openness in which actors may support the general language of sustainable mobility while attaching different meanings to the depth, direction, and means of change.
This ambiguity is important because SUMP is explicitly designed as a collaborative planning framework. Collaborative planning depends not only on involving different actors, but also on establishing enough shared understanding to coordinate action. In the SUMP context, agreement on broad sustainability objectives may not be sufficient if actors interpret sustainable mobility transformation in different ways. One actor may interpret sustainable mobility primarily as electrification and digital mobility services, while another may understand it as reducing car dependence and reallocating public space. Both interpretations can be justified through the broad language of the documents, but they imply different planning priorities.
The findings suggest that the openness of SUMP guidance may support flexibility and local adaptation, but it may also place a significant interpretive burden on local planning actors. Municipalities, consultants, transport operators, political decision-makers, businesses, and civil society organisations may all support SUMP while understanding its transformative ambition differently. This does not mean that ambiguity automatically causes implementation failure. Document analysis cannot establish such a causal relationship. However, the findings suggest that conceptual ambiguity may contribute to implementation difficulties when it allows incompatible interpretations to remain unresolved.
The study contributes to debates on sustainable urban mobility planning by showing that ambiguity is not only a matter of terminology. It concerns how change is conceptualised, prioritised, and translated into planning action. In particular, the analysis shows that technological optimisation, transition, and transformation are often presented as complementary, but their potential tensions are not always made explicit.
Keywords: Sustainable urban mobility plans, Transformation, Ambiguity, Collaborative planning
References
Banister, D. (2008). The sustainable mobility paradigm. Transport Policy, 15(2), 73–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2007.10.005
Berkhout, F. (2006). Normative expectations in systems innovation. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 18(3–4), 299–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537320600777010
Bowen, G. A. (2009). Document analysis as a qualitative research method. Qualitative Research Journal, 9(2), 27–40. https://doi.org/10.3316/QRJ0902027
Dekker, R. (2017). Frame ambiguity in policy controversies: Critical frame analysis of migrant integration policies in Antwerp and Rotterdam. Critical Policy Studies, 11(2), 127–145. https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2016.1147365
Feola, G. (2015). Societal transformation in response to global environmental change: A review of emerging concepts. Ambio, 44, 376–390. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0582-z
Hausigke, S., & Schwedes, O. (2024). Politics and administration in support of transformation for sustainable mobility: A case study of the municipality Berlin–Pankow. Discover Sustainability, 5, Article 483.
Holden, E., Banister, D., Gössling, S., Gilpin, G., & Linnerud, K. (2020). Grand narratives for sustainable mobility: A conceptual review. Energy Research & Social Science, 65, Article 101454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101454
Holden, E., Gilpin, G., & Banister, D. (2020). Sustainable mobility at thirty. Sustainability, 12(5), Article 1965. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12051965
Hudson, B., Hunter, D., & Peckham, S. (2019). Policy failure and the policy-implementation gap: Can policy support programs help? Policy Design and Practice, 2(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/25741292.2018.1540378
Roggema, R., Vermeend, T., & van den Dobbelsteen, A. (2012). Incremental change, transition or transformation? Optimising change pathways for climate adaptation in spatial planning. Sustainability, 4(10), 2525–2549. https://doi.org/10.3390/su4102525
Ruhrort, L. (2023). Can a rapid mobility transition appear both desirable and achievable? Reflections on the role of competing narratives for socio-technical change and suggestions for a research agenda. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 36(1), 123–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2022.2057935
Rupprecht Consult. (2013). Guidelines: Developing and implementing a sustainable urban mobility plan. European Commission.
Rupprecht Consult. (2019). Guidelines for developing and implementing a sustainable urban mobility plan (2nd ed.). European Commission.
Sovacool, B. K., & Axsen, J. (2018). Functional, symbolic and societal frames for automobility: Implications for sustainability transitions. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 118, 730–746. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2018.10.008