Challenges of Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning in Theory and Practice

Dear Colleagues,

Whilst not explicitly called Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), this approach to transport planning has been in existence in the shape of French Plans Deplacement Urbain (PDU), or English Local Transport Plans (LTPs), since the 1990s. As more cities and governments set objectives and targets to reduce pollution from urban transport, improve quality of life in cities and tackle road safety problems, so SUMP has become more well-known and it is now recommended by the European Commission as the core of urban transport planning, in the shape of its Guidelines for Developing and Implementing a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan. These guidelines are based on the well-known and rather technocratic planning cycle of problem identification, objective setting, measure implementation and monitoring and evaluation.  Whilst they highlight some of the challenges in sustainable urban mobility planning, such as scenario testing or measure selection, as might be expected from a set of guidelines, they do not take a critical view of the SUMP process and its component parts, especially in view of the differing planning cultures and administrative contexts of the countries and urban areas in which they are implemented.

It is this more critical view of SUMP that we seek from the articles invited for submission to this Special Issue of Sustainability.  Below we provide a non-exhaustive list of possible topics but for all papers submitted we ask that they take a critical view of SUMPs and SUM planning, asking – and answering – questions such as:

• What are SUMPs achieving? What are they delivering?  What are they not delivering?
• What are the practical difficulties of implementing the advice in the EU and other guidelines on SUMP?
• What conflicts arise in SUM planning and how can these be resolved?
• What does the political nature of SUMP mean for the technocratic planning process?

Within this overall critical framework, topics on which we would particularly welcome papers are below, but please note that this is a non-exhaustive list.  If you are considering a submission to the Special Issue that relates to a different topic, please feel free to contact the guest editors to discuss it with us:

• Integrating sustainable urban mobility planning and land use planning: key approaches and tools and their effects.
• The benefits and disbenefits of using four stage traffic and transport modelling in SUMPs (note: to be considered, articles must discuss both benefits and disbenefits).
• Setting targets and choosing indicators for SUMPs: how much data is enough?
• Essential ingredients of SUMPs needed if they are truly to change travel habits, and the politics of this.
• Public participation in SUMPs – is it all it’s cracked up to be?
• SUMP as a political process and in particular after a change in political control.
• The role of consultants versus in house staff in developing and implementing SUMPs.
• Challenges and benefits in theory and practice of operationalising SUMPs at different scales (town, city, agglomeration, “functional area”, but also at neighbourhood, transport corridor or even country level?). Can regional SUMPs work effectively based on voluntary collaboration between jurisdictions?
• Which SUMP measures are more and less commonly implemented, and why?
• Approaches to encouraging local or regional administrations to develop SUMPs – financial incentives, legal changes, creating a supportive environment, offering expert knowledge and so on: experiences, value added, and unintended consequences.
• Integrating health into SUMP: how effectively can health be used to push for SUMP and how can health indicators be used to monitor SUMP performance
• Tools and best practices linking SUMP with walkability planning – are SUMP cities more walkable cities?
• The contribution of micromobility and shared personal mobility to SUMP – privatization of public space or a real shift to more sustainable mobility? Competition or cooperation between publicly funded services and new private service providers.
• Adapting SUMP to the post COVID reality.

Prof. Tom Rye
Dr. Oriol Marquet Sardà
Dr. Luka Mladenovic
Guest Editors

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• Sustainable
• Transport
• Mobility
• Plan
• Policy implementation
• Practical challenges
• Transport modelling
• Health