Rights and claims for metropolitan mobility

“If I live in a city and commute to another every day, who can ensure that I do so safely?” This personal concern kicks off the latest Metropolis institutional video, narrated by a female voice representing a citizen in an unidentified metropolis, which could be any of our 138 members or any large urban area in the world.

Fundamental to urban dwellers’ daily, mobility is one of the most emblematic, high-profile and sensitive examples of how metropolitan governance applies to the life of many individuals. Transport and its management have a profound impact on people’s access to the vital activities of care, work, study and leisure, on family budgets and therefore on their quality of life.

Satisfying mobility requirements proves increasingly complex when territorial spaces are broadened and diversified, as in the case of the major metropolises, requiring coordination between public authorities of different levels and sizes and between private and individual initiatives, which constitute both formal and informal transport networks.

Mobility requirements in the urban, suburban and peri-urban setting lend themselves to different solutions that help mitigate negative effects on transport poverty and climate change. In the current pandemic, mobility can also play the role of “agent of contagion”, making the transport sector one of the hardest-hit by the crisis.

Mobility management at the metropolitan level must therefore tap several areas of urban planning at the same time to meet the end goal of safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable mobility.

Even though the mobility requirements of metropolises in distinct socio political and economic contexts may differ across various parts of the world, the solutions can be similar in terms of planning and public transit management.

In our tenth issue paper, Floridea Di Ciommo, an economist and urban analyst with expertise in equity and transport, inclusive technology and sustainable logistics, encourages the world’s major metropolises to work together and to roll out solutions posited on metropolitan-scale diagnoses that leave no-one behind.