Pandemic Detours or New Sustainable Pathways? Post-pandemic Mobility Futures in Danish Cities

Transitions for People: Locating Inequality in Sustainable Urban Mobility Transitions

“…One of my empirical papers takes a detour from direct engagement with inequality to explore these questions, particularly in relation to public transportation in Danish cities. Public transportation witnessed a decline in passenger numbers of up to 90 percent (Lindberg et al, 2022), which hit low-income groups disproportionately hard as public transportation is a crusial sorce of mobility for them (Christensen & Baescu, 2021). Therefore, restoring and rethinking public transportation in the wake of the pandemic (Cusack, 2021) and exploring possible mobile tipping points in this relation appeared to be a crucial task from my place at the dining table in our apartment, where I worked during lockdowns with my then 1-year old son on my lap.…”

“…The questions are explored particularly in relation to public transportation in Danish cities because public transportation faced a decline in passenger numbers of up to 90 percent (Lindberg et al, 2022), and because it is a crucial source of mobility especially for low-income groups (Christensen & Baescu, 2021), overrepresented in areas like Folehaven (Christensen et al, 2021). Restoring and rethinking public transportation in the wake of the pandemic and exploring possible mobile tipping points in this relation was a crucial task, which the following paper explores.…”

“…In the SIMS project, the decision-makers' evaluations of the different areas, for example, surfaced in the different narratives of the neighborhoods (Kristensen, Lindberg, and Freudendal-Pedersen, forthcoming). Normativity and evaluations also influence the researcher's decisions and phrasings (Lindberg et al, 2022b). Both practitioner's and researchers' decisions are shaped by who they are, what they know, and how they evaluate it.…”

“…Watson 2012). For example, sustainable mobility policies can take advantage of the increase in working from home following pandemic lockdowns, thereby saving travel (Lindberg et al, 2022a). This way of thinking about change has a sub-political dimension, thereby inviting experiments in the urban sphere such as tactical urbanism or the mobility experiments undertaken in SIMS to investigate how practices could be crafted or interconnected in more sustainable ways.…”

“…Twelve key private and public mobility stakeholders from Denmark were invited to discuss mobility trends during the pandemic with a special emphasis on public transportation. Participants included two regional companies responsible for local trains and busses, a car-sharing company, a ride-sharing company, the metro and light rail company, a large consultancy firm, the Confederation of Danish Industry, the public transportation ticketing provider DOT, and researchers from three universities.The workshop had an open form with plenty of time for reflection and discussions to express frustrations with the current situation and imagine possible futures following it(Lindberg et al, 2022). The workshop was divided into two sessions.…”