Co-designing urban mobility solutions in a socio-technical transition context: Guidelines for participative service design

Abstract

The evolution of urban morphology and urban mobility reveals a complex and multidimensional relation that has been historically linked to the evolution of technology and its influence on people's behaviour, desires, and needs. The increasing level of digitalization of human interactions in both social and work environments has created a new paradigm for urban mobility. Alongside, sustainability concerns are also accelerating the design of new policies for improving citizens’ quality of life in urban areas. To address this new paradigm, municipalities need to consider new methodologies encompassing the different dimensions of the urban environment. This can be achieved if key stakeholders participate in co-creating and co-designing new solutions for urban mobility. In this paper we propose a multidisciplinary approach to these problems, supported by service-dominant logic concepts. The approach was used to design the CoDUMIS framework that brings together four dimensions of urban areas (social, urban, technological, and organizational). The application of the framework to four distinct cases, in Portuguese municipalities, resulted in a set of guidelines that help municipalities to improve their services and policies in a participatory environment, involving all the stakeholders.