Planning Sustainable and Inclusive Transformation: An Energy Democracy Perspective on Urban Mobility Transitions

Antonia Graf ^1,2* Anne Kantel ³

• ¹ Institute for Political Science, Faculty of Educational and Social Science, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
• ² University of Münster, Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
• ³ Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany

Increasingly, calls for more democratic engagement in the mobility transition are enriching scholarly and policy discussions at the intersection of ‘green’ policies and the goal of a just and inclusive transformation process. In this paper, we examine how political expectations for a sustainable mobility transition unfold in the political debate within the German federal democratic system. In other words, we seek to understand along which normative expectations the planned mobility transformations are envisioned to be diffused. We identify constitutive elements from the literature on energy democracy and examine mobility planning documents at the regional governance level in Germany against this background. Specifically, we conduct a content analysis of nine mobility development plans and ask how expectations for sustainable urban mobility transition unfold in relation to the perspectives of energy democracy in order to better assess the democratic dimension in transition planning. Our research shows that expectations related to financial costs, infrastructure, and spatial considerations shape the interpretation of democratic principles such as citizen participation and needs, which are dominantly framed as accessibility challenges. We argue that central elements of energy democracy appeals do not yet resonate in mobility planning and that much remains to be done, if the normative goal of an energy democratic and sustainable urban mobility should be the goal of transformation efforts.