Reconciling High Tech and Low Tech for Sustainable Urban Mobility

Dear Colleagues,

The last several decades have been marked by the spread of high-tech solutions in our daily lives. In the field of mobility, technologies have been constantly under development for products (e.g., electronic features in cars) and for services (e.g., the use of massive data in smartphone mobility apps). Technology in mobility promises more comfort, but also more accessibility, more efficiency and more safety—as an example, autonomous vehicles are expected to reduce road fatalities to near zero. However, these technologies, and more specifically the digital part of mobility, may also have negative environmental and social impacts throughout their lifecycle, and add more complexity to our lives.

As a counterpart, low-tech approaches propose sobriety of consumption and production (of resources, energy, data, etc.) thanks to easy-to-use technologies with potentially lower environmental and social impacts. Moreover, low-tech approaches emphasize a systemic and human-centered perspective, where knowledge, community practices and human work are leading concepts. Yet, if low tech is emphasized, what could be the consequences on safety and security, on travel times? Can we elaborate on the idea of frugal mobility inspired by frugal innovation?

Finally, this Special Issue calls for a reflection on what can be defined as low- or high-tech mobility usages and solutions. In that spirit, could we imagine low-tech automated vehicles or shuttles, a frugal perspective on Mobility as a Service? Is an electric scooter high or low tech? Do we need to support urban walking and active modes by technology, and to what extent? How can we account for the direct and indirect impacts of both trends (high- and low-tech mobility) for citizens, local authorities and mobility providers?

In this Special Issue, the goal is to surpass the dichotomy and investigate whether the two concepts of high tech and low tech can be reconciled to lead to sustainable urban mobility, which is at the same time targeting resilience and liveability of cities.

• Resilience refers to the capacity of a city to recover in times of crisis (e.g., the sanitary COVID-19 crisis, cyberattacks), or natural crises (e.g., floods, heat waves), or related to environmental challenges (e.g., pollution, GHG emissions);
• Liveability refers to the quality of life in cities for all, with aspects of inclusiveness and equity as well as joy and aesthetics.

The Special Issue calls for contributions that demonstrate or discuss how sustainability, resilience and liveability can be used as indicators to measure the effects of technology on urban mobility.

There is no restriction on the mobility modes that are under study, and a wide range of user groups is expected—for instance workers and those who do not work, the young and the aged, pedestrians and motorized citizens, those who live and those who transit in the city, those who move or do not move, out of choice or constraint. Taking user groups into account may foster the discussion on equity and inclusive access, shedding light on who will potentially win or lose with the implementation of a (more or less) technologically assisted mobility.

The editors of this Special Issue invite interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary, theoretically and empirically driven contributions. The papers will possibly focus on a specific user group, type of innovation or specific crisis, dealing with the following topics (not an exhaustive list):

• Service and product human-centred design concepts;
• Case studies investigating the effects of technological deployment on mobility;
• Comparative studies on the effects of technology on mobility in different countries/cultures;
• Future scenario analysis;
• Socio-environmental impact analysis;
• Life cycle assessment;
• Sustainable business model innovation, sustainable value creation;
• Value-sensitive design;
• Automation and mobility infrastructures.

We are calling for contributions from social science, industrial and technical developments, design and mobilities research.

Dr. Flore Vallet
Dr. Henriette Cornet
Guest Editors

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• urban mobility
• low-tech movement
• human–technology relations
• impact assessment
• liveable cities
• user-centred studies
• digital technologies