Governing a Risky Relationship Between Sustainability and Smart Mobility

New mobility services, enabled by developments in digital technology, could be the making of sustainability in urban mobility. Alternatively, they could act to increase car dependence and so worsen what are already severe sustainability problems. Governance of new mobility services needs to steer implementation towards sustainability, and this chapter explores what that governance might look like. The stakes are high because of the extent of sustainability impacts of transport, especially the increasingly urgent need to decarbonise the sector. There is evidence that reductions in car dependence are required to address many of the pressing social, environmental and economic transport problems, including carbon dioxide emissions. Uncertainties about the sustainability implications of new mobility services present challenges for governance. Those governance challenges are heightened by the complex landscape of actors, with new developers and service providers joining an already complicated multi-level system. I argue that collaborative and reflexive governance provides a basis for meeting these challenges of uncertainty and complexity. However, its implementation should involve reframing the relationships between transport authorities and developers of mobility services such that innovation is rewarded, but priority is given to responding to evidence on sustainability impacts as they emerge.