Shifting Mobility Paradigms: Evaluating Values and Redesigning Methods for Sustainable Urban Mobility

The traditional ‘predict and provide’ paradigm in mobility research is increasingly challenged by alternative paradigms like the ‘predict and prevent’ and ‘decide and provide’ paradigm claiming to contribute to the shift to sustainable mobility. The traditional paradigm focuses on accommodating the predicted growth of traffic, while the ‘predict and prevent’ paradigm questions the desirability of accommodating this growth, the ‘decide and provide’ paradigm questions the ‘predicting’. A possible barrier for the transition to sustainable mobility is the persistence of values belonging to the ‘predict and provide’ paradigm, such as speed and volume, in ‘new’ tools and methods. This is problematic because tools (for example digital twins) are not objective knowledge creators, hence the knowledge they create could be less relevant or even undermine the transformative potential of the new paradigms. This thesis aims to contribute to the (re)designing of tools and methods that accelerate the transition to sustainable urban mobility by giving a critical assessment of the values underpinning and being (re)created in those tools. To investigate this, I adopt an interdisciplinary approach combining philosophy of science, specifically literature on epistemic and non-epistemic values, and sustainable transition research.