Redefining mobility

One of the facets of urban life in which the depth of the technological changes of recent years is most noticeable is, without a doubt, that of mobility:

• carsharing , scooters, motorcycles and electric cars that are hired by the minute, are already common in many cities around the world.
• Although still at a very early stage, private and shared autonomous vehicles will change our way of life.
• The concept of mobility as a service emerges with a lot: MaaS (“Mobility as a Service“).
• When we apply new technologies to mobility, we talk about “Smart Mobility“

“Transport has always been the engine of economic and social change. The appearance of cities will change hand in hand with the combination of information and transport technologies,” says Marco Pedrazzo, head of business development at the architecture firm Carlo Ratti Associati. “The time spent commuting to the office will become work or leisure time; the space for car parks will be free for other uses,” he adds.

“We have built our cities around cars, but the way we relate to them is changing dramatically,” says Jaime Rodríguez, former CEO of Blablacar for Spain, Portugal and Germany.

“The new forms of shared mobility allow us to configure a completely different space,” he proposes. “This revolution will affect everything from the real estate sector to the electrification of cities or even how cities smell, feel or sound,” adds Rodríguez.

One of the facilitators of the great transformation to which Jaime alludes has been the fact that almost all citizens have a smartphone (96% of Spaniards, according to the Mobile Report in Spain and in World 2019 of Ditrendia), a device used mostly to contract shared mobility options.

Cities still have a big problem to solve in this area: the streamlining of intercity connections.

In the following video, Natalia de Esteva-Úbeda offers her vision of the challenges that cities must face in terms of mobility: