Abstract
Micro-mobility market-making represents an under-studied but important aspect of urban transport sustainability transitions. Micro-mobility roll-out combines several critical elements: decarbonisation, digitalisation and public space interventions. We theorise the emergence of a micro-mobility market, drawing on innovation studies, micro-politics scholarship and commoning mobility literature, and critically discuss the relationship between innovation and regulation in this emerging market. We examine e-scooter roll-out in Bergen, Norway, using a structured analysis that interrogates knowledge, authority and power. Our empirical analysis employs expert interviews and focus group discussions with key transport sector stakeholders, including policymakers, practitioners and urban residents. We discuss insights in terms of implications for how micro-mobility markets are made and in turn make urban transport sustainability transitions. We argue that while micro-mobility can enable just low-carbon mobility transitions, market forces drive outcomes that may undermine urban sustainability agendas. We identify scope for dynamic regulation to engender low-carbon mobility in wider public interest.
Highlights
Micro-mobility market-making represents an under-studied but important aspect of urban transport sustainability transitions
Scholarship on commoning mobility introduces an explicitly normative aspect that is germane to our focus on sustainability transitions: mobility sector changes must create urban transport solutions that are in public interest, while pursuing low-carbon pathways that are themselves commoning at a planetary scale by lowering atmospheric burdening due to carbon emissions (Henderson, 2020; Sheller, 2011)
The scope and mandate of existing institutions is subject to change (Barnes et al, 2018), and attention to who decides provides insight into the actual constitution of authority. This focus on authority pertains to how rules emerge and become institutionalised in market-making, a concern mirrored in micro-politics research (Burns, 1961; Giampor caro and Gond, 2016)
Summary
Decarbonising transport is a challenging piece of the puzzle for sustainability transitions (Tsoi et al, 2021; Canzler and Knie, 2016). The medium-sized Norwegian city of Bergen, with a population of nearly 300,000 quite common to many European cities, has a mountainous and rainy physical geography that makes micro-mobility especially challenging and important for a low-carbon urban transport transition, as well as a compact historical city centre and suburban sprawl (Engebretsen et al, 2017) It is served by renewably sourced electricity (primarily from hydropower) with a fully digitalised electric grid, and is increasingly expanding an electrified transport system and phasing out fossil fuel vehicles, in line with ambitious low-carbon targets (Wanvik and Haarstad, 2021). Scholarship on commoning mobility introduces an explicitly normative aspect that is germane to our focus on sustainability transitions: mobility sector changes must create urban transport solutions that are in public interest, while pursuing low-carbon pathways that are themselves commoning at a planetary scale by lowering atmospheric burdening due to carbon emissions (Henderson, 2020; Sheller, 2011). These three fields focus on socio-technical change, sectoral reconfiguration and normative socio-spatial effects
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