Organising sustainable urban mobility : towards understanding strategig shifts for accessibility in Cape Town

Abstract

The last decade has presented numerous strategies to tackle urban mobility in our increasing urbanised societies, to move away from unsafe, environmental damaging, socially unjust transport systems. Strategic shifts in planning of urban mobility often come as policy recommendations. However, these policy recommendations must be tested and followed in practice, in order to fully comprehend their possibilities for actual transition to sustainable urban mobility. The purpose of this paper is to (1) describe strategic shifts for urban mobility in the City of Cape Town and to put them in a large international context of shifts in transport planning theory, in order (2) to propose a qualitative case study to understand how urban mobility frameworks are formed and embedded in practice. The study is proposed to follow the translation of urban mobility strategies into policy and practice at the municipal level. Contributions are intended towards transport studies by providing an empirical investigation of topical frameworks for urban mobility. The study also aims to contribute to municipalities and planners by illustrating the opportunities and difficulties in forming and embedding policies for sustainable urban mobility.