Digitalization in urban mobility: An assessment through the IGLUS framework

Over the last century, urban transport studies have traditionally focused on private cars, public transport, and their infrastructures. In the past few decades, there has been a paradigm shift and the concept of mobility has come to the forefront. This approach is more comprehensive, as it includes walking, cycling, new paratransit modes such as e-scooters and, again, their infrastructures. On the other hand, as in other urban infrastructures and services, there is a pervasive digitalization in urban mobility. Electric and urban air mobility, autonomous vehicles, shared services, and platformization are some of the popular topics that are now addressed widely in related literature. In this chapter, we focus on these new technologies and developments in urban mobility and analyze their implications for efficiency, sustainability, and resilience, making use of the IGLUS conceptualization, which is based on a systems approach. Therefore, the interdependence between new mobility and other urban infrastructures and potential scenarios for overall future urban context is also studied. Without a specific country, city, or context, there is a global angle and findings from related literature are synthesized to conduct an analysis.