When Visions Become Reality - Urban Living Labs as a Transition Arena for Sustainable Mobility Culture

Abstract

Access to mobility is an important aspect of social inclusion and therefore also a question of social justice. At the same time, the current transport infrastructure in Germany, which is primarily geared towards the car, generates high external costs such as climate-damaging emissions and immissions or massive land consumption. The resulting demand to ensure socially equitable participation in mobility for all members of society, on the one hand, and to make it more climate-friendly and fairer, on the other, inevitably leads to socio-political challenges.<br> Urban Living Labs (ULLs), a participatory method and kind of real-world laboratory, are increasingly being used as a method to realise a socially accepted traffic transition. However, so far this is more assumption than fact, as there is a lack of empirical data on the effectiveness of the method. As a result, this dissertation is based on hypotheses that deal theoretically and empirically with the transformative potential of ULLs in the context of a traffic transition.<br> The thesis shows that a transport transition can be supported by an ULL, as they influence mobility-related social norms. The focus is on mobility culture as a latent construct. It is operationalised along social norms and reflects the perceived mobility-related normality. Empirical evidence shows that it is linked to mobility behaviour and therefore represents a previously underused starting point for the transport transition. The evaluation of a ULL confirms this: Based on repeated cross-sectional data, changes in mobility culture and mobility behaviour become clear that point in a more sustainable direction, i.e. towards a transport transition.<br> The project provides impulses for analysing cultural and normative processes of the transport transition and for evaluating participatory transformation approaches.