Everyday mobility and citizenship: a living lab approach

ABSTRACT

In the context of a living lab that aimed to reduce everyday car use, citizens in a newly established semi-urban residential area in Sweden were asked to travel less by car, try mobility and accessibility services, and to reason about travelling and their own role in a future sustainable transport system. By analysing the participants’ written reports about mobility practices and mobility citizenship, collected through a living lab app, the paper explores links between everyday mobility and mobility citizenship. The analysis, which is based on theories on citizenship and mobility and social practice theory, shows that the participants’ reports provided context-specific knowledge regarding everyday mobility and citizenship. The participants expressed both knowledge about and engagement in their local environment. This opens new ways to understand, explore and make use of mobility citizenship, in research and in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Everyday mobility
• living lab
• mobility citizenship
• social practice theory

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the everyone in the Mistra Sams research team that have been involved in different steps in the research process. Thank you also to the reviewers for valuable and constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Mistra för Miljöstrategisk Forskning [2014/25].