Mo.Hub – Co-Developing Cooperative Mobility Hubs in Vienna

Abstract

Cities face the challenge that urban public spaces are often dominated by moving and parked motorised vehicles. In particular in existing neighbourhoods, the question arises as to where space for active mobility, greening and recreation can be taken from and how public space can be redesigned to meet users’ needs. The availability of diverse mobility solutions - as concentrated at mobility hubs - promotes inter-modal and multi-modal, seamless mobility and helps to reduce motorisation (Villareal 2018; Pais 2019; Claasen 2020). Thus, mobility hubs are used in some European cities, to concentrate different mobility options and functions of the public urban space spatially and digitally concentrate (Villareal 2018; Pais 2019; Claasen 2020). The implementation of such mobility hubs has often taken place in new neighbourhoods and is organised in a top-down manner by transport companies, city administrations or developers. The research project Mo.Hub (https://mohub.at) aims to tackle the challenge of implementing mobility hubs in existing neighbourhoods by co-developing and implementing three mobility hubs with a cooperative and co-creative approach for a pilot phase of six months in Vienna. The mobility hubs combine demand-oriented (shared) mobility offers in close distance to public transport and a jointly designed recreational area, in the form of a parklet. Thereby public space regained by transforming the behaviour from private car use to multi-modal mobility behaviour is made visible. A higher user acceptance is expected by involvement not only in the implementation process but also by testing new operating models that build upon active participation and self-organization.