Experimental and participatory governance of mobility hubs in urban sustainable transitions

The pursuit of sustainability by cities implies a change in the transport sector that is closely linked to a decrease in private motorized transport and at the same time, requires a shift towards more environmentally friendly and inclusive modes of mobility. One important driver of sustainable mobility transitions is the expansion of multimodality which allows people to time-effectively and smoothly use different mobility modes, e.g., driving a shared bike after a tram ride. Mobility hubs are the physical location where people can switch modes of mobility. Currently many European cities (further) develop mobility hubs and face challenges like contested redistribution of public space, infrastructure conversion, complex stakeholder constellations with different interests and needs and, not at least, the great depth of intervention in people's daily routines. In other words, implementing mobility hubs provokes active and often controversial public debate and sometimes protests. Also, mobility hubs can only serve as an offer; they depend on citizens' acceptance and active usage to be successful. In this paper, we look at the governance of mobility hubs with a participatory and experimental governance lens. As a heuristic device, the democratic integration ladder will help to consider and discuss different stages of participation applied to the mobility hubs. We aim to examine if and how various participation processes lead to a higher outcome on the integration ladder, thereby implicitly enhancing the acceptance and legitimacy of the mobility hubs. Reports on participation processes in four living labs across European cities serve as the empirical base for this paper. Researchers in the living labs conducted participatory stakeholder workshops, experimental design games played with residents and other local stakeholders, and co-creative workshops with digital pillars. The empirical data corpus will also include local policy documents to contextualize local case studies. The paper enriches current academic literature with additional empirical results from the mobility sector and helps systemize participation formats according to the democratic integration ladder.