Exploring sustainable urban mobility in Africa-and-MENA universities towards intersectional future research

Abstract

As university campuses in Africa and the MENA region represent key traffic hubs in their cities, this paper develops a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to conceptualize a “framework of action” for intersectional sustainable urban mobility. The SLR includes the screening of 258 articles with filtering strategies resulting in 43 articles, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) and Bibliometrics analysis, Systematics, Meta-analysis, and Storytelling techniques (BSMS). Six thematic areas are identified, travel behavior, policy and planning, environment and energy, gendered mobility, health and pandemics, and access for persons with disabilities, in which the most recurrent theme is travel behavior, and research method is survey questionnaires. The study explores the intersectional possibilities of future research-themes with an overview of issues, indicators and determinants. Themes are categorized geographically, methodologically and chronologically from 2007 to 2023. The proposed “framework of action” promotes intersectional research encouraging universities to lead sustainable mobility initiatives from a microscale approach, impacting city-wide sustainability efforts. This framework helps Africa-and-MENA universities to act as focal points for decision-making towards sustainable urban mobility in the city, benefitting urban planners, municipalities and inter-governmental collaboration by providing targeted interventions within-to-and-around campuses.