Venere Stefania SANNA, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Aniko BERNAT, TÁRKI Social Research Institute, Hungary
Vera Lúcia DIOGO, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal
Agnieszka LUKASIEWICZ, The Road and Bridge Research Institute, Poland
Joao Filipe TEIXEIRA, University of Porto, Portugal
Egle VAICIUKYNAITE, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania
In many cities worldwide, the use of private cars is slowly giving way to new forms of shared and sustainable micro-mobility, represented in the most part by bike-sharing and, more recently, electric scooter sharing (Shaheen et al 2010, McKenzie 2019).
Supported in different ways by local governments to reduce private vehicle use, carbon emissions, and more generally to foster pro-environmental behaviors (Diogo et al 2021), sharing mobility practices have the potential to combine dense, multi-modal urban mobility with the growing demand for environmental sustainability (Heinrichs 2013). However, these collaborative consumption practices are also producing complex distortions by exacerbating socio-spatial inequalities, processes of urban marginalization, and social exclusion.
This paper aims to (i) discuss the main outcomes of a piece of comparative and survey-based research carried out in 2021 in five European capital cities – Budapest, Lisbon, Rome, Vilnius and Warsaw – on the use of bike and electric scooter sharing schemes before and during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis; and (ii) examine pros and cons of the major and most recent measures adopted in these European capitals regarding shared micro-mobility, in order to explore the possible role of these practices in the redesign of “post-pandemic” and “15-minute cities” (Moreno 2021) based on the concept of proximity and focused on environmental sustainability and energy transition.
The objective is to reflect on the role and the (still unexpressed potential) sustainable mobility, and to offer useful indication to optimize the range of services made available by current digital technologies and models of collaborative consumption of the sharing economy, in support of urban planning that takes into account the issues of sustainability and environmental, spatial, and social justice.
Mots clés : bike sharing|e-scooter sharing|European capitals|micro-mobility|Covid-19
A103221VS