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One Planet Mobility – European Cities Initiative

Here in Europe, the mobility sector – particularly personal car use – is the fastest-growing in terms of energy demands. It’s the only sector with consistently increasing emissions in most countries. It’s clear this really needs to change – and that’s what our European Cities Initiative aims to achieve.

Most European countries recognise they will have to reduce their carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, perhaps even 95%, to help avert catastrophic global warming. This challenge also presents us with a unique opportunity to create a whole new mobility system in the 21st century.

Some progress has been made already, but so far this has focused on small improvements such as making vehicles more fuel-efficient. It’s been relatively successful, but the gains have been outstripped by the overall growth in demand for transport.

To fully embrace the solution – achieving low-carbon travel and better quality of life for people – we need transformational change. But that means overcoming the barriers to change.

Towards a new, smarter transport system

Our European Cities Initiative is a long-term project to radically change urban travel. Our ambitious vision is to have carbon-free personal transport in towns and cities across Europe.

The initiative is led by WWF-UK, working in partnership with WWF offices and partner cities across Europe – starting in Barcelona (Spain), Freiburg (Germany) and Malmö (Sweden). We aim to extend the work to UK cities soon.

European city governments are increasingly committed to becoming leaders in sustainability. Tackling the biggest environmental challenges of our times – like climate change – offers cities unique opportunities to tackle some of the other problems of urban life at the same time. For example, it can create better community relations, increasing biodiversity, and improving people’s overall health.

There is already a range of initiatives aimed at reducing the environmental impact of urban transport. But the UN Climate Change Committee (UNFCCC), NGOs and scientific bodies such as the IPCC report there’s a lack of comprehensive data on the links between climate change and transport.

We believe it’s the right moment to grasp this opportunity and build strong partnerships for change in cities – creating long-term strategies that are ecologically sustainable. We plan to create groups of people in each partner city that will provide leadership and commitment to developing working models and steering long-term change.

The success stories will then be transferred to a wide range of cities across Europe to mainstream a new model of sustainable urban mobility that combines radical carbon reductions with high levels of quality of life.

Key elements of the process will involve...

REAP Transport Scenario Tool
In collaboration with Stockholm Environment Institute and Technical University Berlin, a scenario tool is currently being developed that will be able to create scenarios for CO₂ reductions based on applying different policies for urban mobility, and show the synergies of combining push, pull and land use policies (see diagram below).

This tool will also show the systemic links with other mobility-related factors like urban pollution, travel time and costs of policies. It will provide local policymakers with scenarios and policy recommendations.

Stakeholder process
Local stakeholders from business, government and civil society will be engaged in a process that will support decision makers to develop policy scenarios and help them to implement the recommended sustainable transport policies. Local facilitators will help design and facilitate the process and local WWF offices will support it.

Participatory design
Designers are supporting the process by using participatory design to engage the public in creating ideas and scenarios for sustainable mobility. Strategic Design Scenarios and Design School Malmö have been involved with a first pilot project in this field in Malmö.

What the initiative will create

• Scenarios for sustainable urban transport and policy recommendations for CO2 emission reductions from urban mobility for each participating city.
   
• Evaluations about co-benefits and other domains like urban pollution, travel time, cost of policy, infrastructure investment.
   
• Creative scenarios to engage wider stakeholder groups in a new model of mobility and sustainable transport innovations.
   
• Groups of people in each partner city that are committed to providing leadership, for driving and supporting a long-term systemic change towards a new sustainable model of urban mobility.

Partners in the initiative

The initiative involves a number of leading environmental and urban transport expert organisations: Stockholm Environmental Institute, ICLEI (Local governments for sustainability), Technical University Berlin and the design consultancy Strategic Design Scenarios