From techno-centrism to socio-centrism: The evolution of principles for urban sustainable mobility

The study aims to identify the evolution of perspectives on sustainable urban mobility and the principles that have emerged. Despite the burgeoning of interest in and contributions to sustainable mobility, the debate on its underlying principles has remained peripheral. The overwhelming focus has been on micro-dynamics and the need for comprehensive perspectives has been underestimated. Principles are crucial whenever there are conflicting policy objectives. Indeed, sustainable mobility practices primarily address obvious emergencies, whose priorities are undisputed. However, once these emergencies have passed, heterogeneous stakeholders may express different priorities for secondary problems, so that the priorities themselves need to be defined through a political process. Such a process requires an in-depth thought on principles. Through a systematic literature review on peer-reviewed journal articles and proceedings from 1996 to 2018, this study highlights two main perspectives that have shaped the way sustainability in urban mobility management is conceived today: planning versus strategy oriented. We then identify a set of principles that have gained center-stage in the debate on urban mobility and that, in our view, show how the debate has evolved: socio-centrism, participatory planning, systemic evaluation of financial sustainability, and integrated mobility management. The new perspective privileges a holistic approach. A pivotal role is played by the social dimension, whereas technical and economic evaluations assume a different role in the political process of priority definition.