Policy experiments and experimental governance approaches have long been become common practice in urban mobility transformations. Such experiments, which consist in quick-to-implement, low-cost and easily adaptable interventions are expected to provide opportunities for learning-by-doing, and for making long-term transformations and strategies actionable and tangible. Thereby, they are seen as a way to overcome the limitations of classic masterplanning with its long time horizons, path dependencies, high costs and limited adaptability to changing circumstances. Experimental governance approaches and policy experiments have experienced a boom during the pandemic phase of Covid-19, which presented unique challenges but also opportunities for urban mobility governance.

In two separate but thematically related research projects, one conducted at ETH Lausanne and one at TU Munich, we analysed the role of experiments in the governance of urban mobility during Covid-19 in the transformation of urban mobility systems. We asked in how far these experiments allowed cities to seize the disruption of Covid-19 to advance on-going plans for the decarbonisation of urban mobility, in how far the experiments allowed cities to overcome barriers that hamper transformation efforts in the domain of urban mobility, and we investigated how the deployment of experiments in a context of crisis affected the role and possibilities of different actors - municipal and regional authorities, mobility interest and activist groups, mobility-dependent businesses etc. - to make themselves heard in urban mobility transformations.

Related websites:

https://www.epfl.ch/labs/herus/index-html/projects/tactical-urbanism/

https://mcube-cluster.de/en/projekt/trex/

Related publications:

Meinherz, F. X., & Wentland, A. (2024). Urban mobility policy in pandemic times: An exploration of how Covid-19 affected policy framings and priorities in eight European cities. Soziologie und Nachhaltigkeit, 9-29. https://www.uni-muenster.de/Ejournals/index.php/sun/article/download/5270/5399

Meinherz, F. X., Mögele, M., Heese, J., Jung, M., Ruf, S., Wentland, A. (2024). Wie Experimente zur verantwortungsvollen Gestaltung der kommunalen Mobilitätswende beitragen können. Kommunalpraxis: Fachzeitschrift für Verwaltung, Organisation und Recht. Ausgabe Bayern, 378-382.

Meinherz, F. X., & Fritz, L. (2023). “The crisis justified the urgency, but now we have to go back to the rule of law”: Urban mobility governance during Covid-19. Environmental Politics, 33(3), 508–529. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09644016.2023.2242741

Meinherz, F., Mögele, M., Nitschke, L., Marquardt, E., & von Schneidemesser, D. (2023). Die experimentelle Stadt: Ent-oder (Re) politisierung städtischer Transformationen?. Polarisierte Welten. Verhandlungen des 41. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Bielefeld 2022, 41. https://publikationen.soziologie.de/index.php/kongressband_2022/article/download/1629/1800