Abstract:
Digitization processes are currently affecting urban areas in many ways, superimposing a new technological layer on the urban space. The permanent availability of data and knowledge brings about new design options and thus new players who shape the urban space with digital services and intelligent technology solutions. Thus, digitization and its integration into urban systems is characterized by the involvement of various actors and diverse interests, with policy-makers and administration aiming for public goods such as resource efficiency and quality of life while the private sector takes digitally based developments as a gateway for opening up urban systems as a new market.
In this Ph.D. project, transformations in the digital city and related governance arrangements are examined with a focus on actors and actor constellations shaping urban space. The research is focused on digitally based developments in the mobility sector, where digitization generates new mobility services involving new actors such as Car2Go or Moovel, which are co-designing urban mobility systems. Integrated data management platforms, real-time data availability and user interfaces also enable shared mobility, on-demand mobility as well as new mobility concepts, such as MyTaxi or Uber, paving the way for mobility to become an integrated system of bundled transportation services. As a means to provide tailored mobility solutions for end-users, these developments can be summed up under the concept of Mobility as a Service (MaaS).
Current developments in the mobility sector become manifested in urban spatial structures, e.g., in the from of car-sharing parking lots or charging infrastructures of different providers in public space. Potential future impacts on urban space and structure, e.g., the reevaluation or devaluation of urban areas or the social and spatial differentiation through unequal access to mobility services, are influenced by the interest, decisions and interventions of heterogeneous actors within multi-actor constellations.
Research design
Focusing on emerging governance arrangements, which affect urban space in the context of digitization, the development of digitally supported mobility services along with respective actor constellations, their interactions and spatial requirements will be analyzed. In order to answer the research question – “How are urban governance arrangements structured which affect urban space in the context of digitally supported mobility services?” – digital mobility services in the cities of Stuttgart (GER) and Portland (Oregon/ USA) serve as case studies.
Actor-centered institutionalism as elaborated by Reante Mayntz and Fritz Scharpf is used to investigate actors, actor constellations and their modes of interaction, which directly and indirectly affect urban development. With regard to actor constellations, a special focus will be set on the role of planning in the integrated development of urban space and infrastructure.