Governance challenges of mobility platforms: the case of Merwede, Utrecht

The climate crisis and a soaring urban population are two urgent planning issues. City governments are increasingly feeling the need to adapt to and mitigate climate change. Furthermore, physical and institutional interventions on housing markets are considered necessary to keep or render cities affordable and accessible for their communities [35]. Against this backdrop, densification has increasingly been considered a potential way forward in designing and building cities (see for instance [3, 9]), which has direct implications for mobility. While monofunctional neighbourhoods with either residential or commercial functions trigger commuter flow, higher density increases the potential for public transit and active modes like bicycling and walking [4, 30, 37]. Densification implies what we refer to here as a consideration of mobility arrangements: configurations of (1) land use, (2) mobility services, and (3) mediation platforms between land use and mobility services. Examples of such new arrangements include shared-vehicle fleets that are connected to urban development projects, and car traffic-free neighbourhoods with collectively owned parking structures at the edges (see for instance [34]).

Such new mobility arrangements often rely on digital technologies to connect demand and supply through a digital infrastructure that can help to address mobility challenges [50]. Here, a key role is played by digital platforms: “(re)programmable digital infrastructures that facilitate and shape personalized interactions among end-users and complementors, organized through the systematic collection, algorithmic processing, monetization, and circulation of data” ([41], p. 3). Being algorithm-driven solutions, they can steer or nudge user behaviour to improve user experiences as well as the efficiency of a mobility system at large. However, these digital solutions tend to come with two caveats.

First, the implementation of mobility innovations often precedes political debates: it circumvents democratic mechanisms, thereby excluding conversations on how public values are (to be) affected and which public values are (to be) prioritized (cf. [32, 33]). It tends to be after a new phenomenon has established in a city—e.g. when Airbnb has become a nuisance for residents—that governments develop regulations to solve problems—e.g. to address a large tourist population. Second, technological mobility solutions are generally scoped in isolation from spatial context and existing mobility arrangements. The risk is that a discrepancy unfolds between envisioned solutions and how they work in the real, physical environment. For instance, a platform’s vision may not be tailored to a city’s needs and be out of sync with the locale where it is implemented [39]. Different countries, cities, and neighbourhoods come with different governments, political ideologies and visions, cultures and communities, preferences, and physiques. A digital innovation may be helpful in one neighbourhood, yet unnecessary or dysfunctional in another (cf. [23]).

The objective of this article is to empirically unpack the governance questions that come up in a case where densification meets platform mobility. Central in this analysis is the case of Merwede, an envisioned neighbourhood in the Dutch city of Utrecht, with a density of well over 200 dwellings per hectare. Concomitant with this high density, car ownership and use are de-prioritized. The projected density requires a shift from ‘owning’ mobility to ‘using’ mobility. The Utrecht local government is in the proverbial driver’s seat: it develops the rules for a digital mobility innovation before that innovation is implemented. Furthermore, the innovation is to be part and parcel of the new neighbourhood: to avoid isolation of ‘the digital’ from ‘the physical’, the making of the mobility concept is integrated into the development process from the outset. The plans for the new neighbourhood have received critical acclaim, both nationally and internationally (see for instance [5, 42]). As an extreme case—i.e. an early adopter of a radically different strategy of building urban neighbourhoods—Merwede provides a rich empirical demonstration of governance challenges and unfolds theoretical implications [31].

The article is structured as follows. First, it addresses mobility platforms and connects them to planning practice and governance challenges. Second, the article introduces the case of Merwede and addresses the methodological aspects of the research. We then move on to an empirical illustration of governance challenges based on an analysis of the making of a mobility concept for Merwede. Based on earlier research about the governance of urban development projects, these challenges are divided into three categories: (1) setting up organizational structures, (2) running decision-making processes, and (3) developing and operating the instruments necessary to make a mobility arrangement work. The article concludes with a summary of the findings and critical reflections.

The infrastructural presence of platforms in urban environments marks the rise of platform urbanism: an intertwinement of platforms and urban space, “operationalized via (social) mobile navigation applications and played out on public roads, in particular, and the information public sphere, more generally” ([50], p. 366; see also [2]). Mobility platforms do not merely connect supply and demand of transport; processes of platformization “affect[s] the entire sector, effectively blurring the division between private and public transport modalities; existing public-private arrangements have started to shift as a result” ([52], p. 75) (emphasis in original). Thus, while platforms and digital technologies introduce a new dimension to conventional planning practices, they also affect the overall governance of planning practices. Van Doorn [53], p. 1817) brings in Airbnb as an example, where “politics are intrinsic to and indissociable from the operations of its platform” (emphasis in original). As a new governing actor within the sectors of tourism and housing, Airbnb is setting new norms and standards for how interaction is organized, without taking responsibility for the consequences. The platform enables citizens to monetize their house as a form of income, thereby causing inequalities in wealth between house owners and non-owners as well as a housing shortage [53]. Similarly, digital platforms present new challenges to planning practitioners by shifting the relations between parties involved in city building [50]., p. 365) speak of “a seeming ‘digital standoff’ … between city planners and application providers as well as drivers using or even contributing information to the navigation applications.” Concluding from their research on traffic and navigation platform Waze, Van der Graaf and Ballon argue that while the privatization of the public sphere might not be new, the pervasiveness of and lack of transparency about the control and ownership within “complex multi-stakeholder platform-based ecosystems” is ([50], p. 371).

The rise of on-demand mobility services such as Uber, Lyft, and Blablacar exemplifies the digitization of the urban environment: these services allegedly provide faster and more efficient trips from A to B, focusing on customer experience (e.g. a quick, cheap and smooth trip) and corporate interests (e.g. efficiency gains, data utilization) [52, 55]. However, services such as Uber might affect the city as a whole negatively: more accessible mobility solutions could, for instance, trigger the demand for mobility (‘induced demand’), increase congestion, and boost emissions (e.g. CO₂). Similar to Airbnb, mobility platforms may fulfil the needs of individuals, but harm the collective interest as they function disconnectedly from the physical environment. Moreover, as highlighted by the concept of reverse technology assessment [32], it is often after a particular platform or service has been implemented and becomes operational that societal or political debate is sparked and legislation and regulation become the subject of public debate. By then, for authorities, the only way forward is to either allow or prohibit the platform or service in question, as happened in some Dutch cities with UberPop [40]. Is there an alternative?

Several scholars address the central role governments ought to play. According to Meijer [38], p. 196), “data-infrastructures embody value judgments about the city and thus are not neutral tools but mechanisms for governing the political community of citizens.” Docherty [24] argues that it is not a question if governments have to play a role in this digital transition, but how. A potential change of tack for policymakers (including planners) would be to assume a more proactive role, by acknowledging the digital dimension in urban planning and the increasing role of algorithms in shaping urban life, and by reshaping their tasks and responsibilities to safeguard and promote public interests [23]. Van der Graaf and Ballon weigh into this conversation by proposing a move towards “an ‘architecture of opportunities’ where public and private urban design professionals as well as citizens need to reconsider their own role and ownership in ‘city making’ that is not only smart but foremost human” ([50], p. 371). Likewise, Pangbourne et al. [39] argue that MaaS (Mobility-as-a-Service) is not to be merely considered as a separate private-sector business opportunity. Instead, it should be internalized in public strategic urban plans that mobility platforms are integrated into the larger urban agenda.

In line with the aforementioned calls for alternative strategies, local governments have increasingly been taking a more proactive approach to resolving mobility questions. For instance, they have been formulating instructions for mobility platforms and their integration into urban environments while these environments are being developed—e.g. incorporating the making of mobility platforms into the making of new neighbourhoods. However, developing such alternative, often unconventional solutions implies significant challenges of governance. In this article, we focus on governance as the making and operating of new organizational structures, decision-making processes, and instruments [7, 44, 46], in settings that are characterized by complicating questions of political and technical nature, and by the involvement of a multitude of actors (cf. [49]).

Scholars of platform urbanism and smart mobility have written extensively on the governance challenges entailed to these endeavours, generally based on empirical research. For instance, Docherty et al. [25], p. 114) discuss at length how “changing networks of actors, resources and power, new logics of consumption, and shifts in how mobility is regulated, priced and taxed” affect the safeguarding of public value and thus require deep discussions on governance. Furthermore, based on a study of 200 urban mobility platforms, Stehlin et al. [45] signal five trajectories of platform formation. One of these trajectories, labelled ‘Governmental fix’, comprises governments (EU, regional, local) that establish mobility platforms to promote social values. These are often integrative, all-in-one MaaS portals that operate at city-regional scale and integrate public and private services. However, where mobility platforms truly meet urban planning, i.e. where a mobility arrangement is integrated into the development process of, for instance, a new neighbourhood, empirical research has been lacking. Yet, there has been increasing interest and action among (local) governments in exploring the potential of high-density urban neighbourhoods with alternative mobility schemes including digital mobility platforms for instance in the neighbourhoods of Kalasatama (Helsinki) and Binckhorst (The Hague). There is a need for both acquiring and sharing empirical, practice-oriented knowledge on this topic.

Furthermore, integrating mobility arrangements, including digital mobility platforms, into development processes has the potential to develop more refined conceptual insights on the governance of platform urbanism. We foresee a novel set of governance challenges related to platform urbanism of the type that we see in Merwede, because such cases of platform urbanism include different (1) organizational structures, (2) decision-making processes, and (3) instruments than most other cases of platform urbanism have depicted so far (cf. [39, 45]).

First, as for organizational structures, integrating mobility arrangements into development processes implies a different constellation of actors. For instance, the typical start-ups and tech firms that are common players in platform urbanism [45] are not nearly as important when a municipality and several real estate developers and investors determine the agenda for a future neighbourhood. Landownership becomes a key factor as the mobility concept can only become a success if all landowners on a project site endorse the mobility plan—and are willing to pay for it.

All in all, these peculiarities create a different and largely unaddressed set of governance challenges. In this article we explore these challenges by zooming in on what has occurred so far in the development process of Merwede. We consider this case a frontrunner that showcases an early attempt at connecting urban development to mobility platforms.

Located in Utrecht, the district Merwedekanaalzone will be turned into a mixed-tenure, mixed-use urban district over the next two decades, and Merwede (the focus of this article) is part of this large-scale redevelopment. The proposal for Merwede is to develop 6000 dwellings in an area of approximately 25 ha as part of the urban fabric of Utrecht, the fastest-growing city in the Netherlands. However, realizing this development with a conventional car-parking norm of between 0.7 and 1 per household would increase traffic generation in the area so dramatically that the City of Utrecht would not be allowed to proceed with the plan due to road capacity constraints and safety issues [1, 6, 54]. A traditional mobility scheme focused on car ownership and use has therefore been out of the question.

Building Merwede proved only feasible if combined with an innovative mobility arrangement that would significantly limit traffic generation. Therefore, the City of Utrecht [21, 22] has been preparing an arrangement for Merwede that consists of three elements: (1) a spatial configuration including a public space that facilitates active transport, connects well to public transit, and is largely free of cars; (2) a parking concept for cars that involves a low parking norm of 0.3 per residence¹ and a plan for parking at a distance (at designated Park & Ride locations); and (3) several mobility hubs, which include mobility services, mobility shops, and a digital platform. These hubs are planned to offer “attractive, easily accessible and affordable (shared) mobility services,” on a 24/7 basis, to inhabitants and visitors of Merwede [22]. Physical mobility shops will be the places to go to for picking up packages and customer service. A digital platform has been proposed to bring together the demand for and supply of services, offering a marketplace where users can plan, book, and pay for mobility [20].

Four provisional requirements have been set for the platform: (1) inhabitants and visitors should be able to arrange and pay for mobility services in one app; (2) the app should aim to fulfil the individual needs of users, offering different prices and membership or subscription types; (3) the platform should monitor travel behaviour and become more intelligent over time so that it gets better at predicting the use of mobility services (i.e. it should be self-learning); and (4) the platform should anticipate demand at all times and thus be able to adequately deal with contingencies (e.g. changing weather conditions, congestion, malfunctions) ([6], p. 11 [51];, p. 13).

The planning of Merwede has been in progress since the early 2000s. An early version of a new plan for the entire Merwedekanaalzone was presented in 2004 [10], but a new version did not come to fruition until after the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. In 2015, Utrecht’s local government embraced ‘healthy urban living’ as the new motto for the development of the city. This implied a new spatial planning strategy, focusing on densification and the proliferation of active transport [12‐17]. Under the umbrella of this new strategy, concrete plans for the Merwedekanaalzone, and more specifically Merwede, started to unfold. Several vision documents, mobility reports, and environmental studies were published in 2017 and 2018 [1, 6, 18, 19, 26], followed by further formal documentation on the urban plan and its affiliated mobility concept in 2019 and 2020 [20, 21, 27, 28, 36].

Although at the time of writing (fall 2020) a land-use plan has yet to be developed, several key decisions for Merwede have been made. For instance, within the 25 ha of the project site, no more than 1800 parking spots will be available for 6000 homes; parking spots can only be rented, not purchased; and approximately one-fifth of these spots will be reserved exclusively for shared cars. These arrangements have been included in a term sheet, signed by the City of Utrecht and six developers, which sets forth the basic (and non-binding) terms and conditions for developing the new neighbourhood. This term sheet will be followed by a (binding) partnership agreement before the preparations for a land-use plan commence. Table 1 provides a technical overview of Merwede and summarizes the planning process up until 2020.

Our research approach has been transdisciplinary: we responded to, and actively engaged in, a policy challenge the City of Utrecht grappled with: making a mobility concept for Merwede. We observed this process and flagged governance questions and dilemmas as they unfolded. During this process, we gathered data in three ways to assemble an overview of the governance questions that occurred in practice. First, we collected documents at Utrecht’s local government that were directly related to the planning process for Merwede, including the mobility platform. These documents included internal and sometimes embargoed project information, but also publicly available material. Second, we conducted exploratory interviews with actors involved in the Merwede project and mobility experts. We talked to 10 interviewees in total: two managers of mobility projects at the City of Utrecht; two consultants that advise the municipality on Merwede’s mobility concept; one private developer who owns land on the Merwede project site; two academic scholars of mobility; and three public officials outside Utrecht who manage MaaS programs and projects. The interviews took 45 min on average. We asked respondents outside of Merwede primarily questions about lessons that they learned from mobility platforms that they had studied or been involved in. Respondents involved in Merwede would receive questions that were tailored to the respective mobility platform and urban development. Third, we hosted several workshops with public officials and mobility experts in which we discussed the foundations for the mobility platform. These exercises helped unveil the critical decisions and dilemmas that policymakers deal with in cases like Merwede. Table 2 provides an aggregated overview of the data collection.

We analysed policy and project documentation, interview summaries, and workshop reports using the aforementioned threefold division of governance dimensions: organizational structures, decision-making processes, and instruments [7, 44, 46]. As an analytical framework, these three dimensions helped us to recognize and assess governance challenges as follows. First, we would allocate a challenge to the dimension of organizational structures when it concerned the actor constellation: the actors involved and the accountability lines and allocation of tasks and responsibilities between these actors. Second, when we came across issues regarding public participation and the phasing of Merwede’s development, we would recognize these as questions of decision-making processes. Third, where the case material put forward matters such as definitions of the mobility platform, financial resources, and contracts, we would put those in the category of instruments. Ultimately, our interpretations resulted in three clusters of empirical findings. This article highlights some of the most pertinent governance challenges of Merwede; the questions that have remained outstanding despite several years of preparations by and negotiations between the City of Utrecht and other stakeholders involved in the development.

Based on our analysis, we discuss the most pertinent challenges about the governance of the mobility arrangement for Merwede, focusing respectively on organizational structures, decision-making processes, and instruments.

The Merwede project epitomizes a recent worldwide trend on the nexus of digital innovation, mobility, and city building, exhibiting a pioneering effort to integrate a mobility platform into the institutional and spatial context of a new neighbourhood. In this article we have studied governance challenges that arise in such a development. We came across several outstanding questions, and by discussing some of the most challenging ones we provided empirical insights that bear relevance to the practice of making and operating mobility platforms that are to be connected to new and existing neighbourhoods.

First, regarding organizational structures, we discussed the complex actor constellation and concomitant ownership and responsibility issues that we observed in the process. The analysis showed that the novelty of Merwede’s mobility concept has come with questions about how to divide tasks during the development phase and which new roles and institutions to establish for the operating phase of the neighbourhood (cf. [50]). Also, our case shows how the interaction between developing MaaS and urban planning processes could play out. Merwede’s mobility platform will be developed and operated in connection to its physical environment, as both the municipality and all other landowners in the area are involved in the making of that platform (cf. [39]). However, an important caveat is in place here: many of the actual decisions about the mobility platform still have to be made.

Second, the public participation process for Merwede as a whole proved conventional, focusing mainly on the concerns of citizens living in the adjacent neighbourhoods that will be directly affected. Public participation on the mobility concept has been non-existent. In that sense the case of Merwede has not (yet) addressed the issue raised by Frenken and Schor [33] that digital innovations are often implemented without deep debates upfront. Furthermore, internal discussions in the project have revolved around the different perspectives on the business case(s) of the development of the neighbourhood in combination with the viability of the mobility concept, and not so much about setting up and operating an elaborate public participation process with (future) residents. Without there being a deal between the landowners, a new mobility concept is likely to fail. Therefore, it has hitherto been a priority for the actors involved to focus on the viability and feasibility of the plans rather than on public participation.

Third, we addressed the key instrument of Merwede’s mobility concept: the mobility platform. We presented various views on the definition, scope, and success factors of the platform to illustrate that there has not been an unambiguous understanding of what it should be and do. A public procurement procedure is necessary before a platform provider and operator can be contracted, yet what is to be included in the concomitant contract remains a topic of discussion among the landowners on the project site. Also, we discussed how a current lack of clarity about the platform increases uncertainty about its future and that of other, related instruments, including both existing and prospective contracts and concessions related to mobility. All in all, this empirical study of Merwede indicates the vast complexity of an endeavour this unconventional.

To conclude this article, it is worthwhile to observe that there is now a widespread academic consensus about the value of having new conversations on digital technologies and how they pervade the urban fabric (see for instance [48]). Yet, in our case of Merwede these conversations have hitherto been lacking. Other initiatives of platform urbanism and ‘smart neighbourhoods’ across the globe have met with stronger opposition—for instance the plans that Sidewalk Labs had for Quayside on the Toronto waterfront [43, 47]. Such different experiences points to the need for future scholarship to systematically compare the different ways of staging debates about the conjunction between sustainable urban planning and the platformization of mobility services. We hope that with this in-depth elaboration of the case of Merwede we have contributed to this critical agenda for policy and research.