Redesigning Mobility for Sustainable and Inclusive Futures

In 2019 transportation became the highest contributor to the UK’s carbon emissions, comprising 27% of our total carbon usage annually. And despite improvements to our vehicles and transport systems, transport use has increased over the last 30 years, meaning we have not yet reduced its environmental impact. In fact, it’s contribution to the climate crisis is so significant, the UK government estimates we will need to reduce carbon usage in our cars, lorries, trains, buses, and other transport modes by up to 86% within the next thirty years. There is an urgent need to redesign our mobility systems and to transition to green solutions that can reduce our environmental impact.

Redesigning our mobility systems for net zero will require deep changes to how everyone moves between and within places, and whilst technological solutions such as the electrification of vehicles will take us so far, it is crucial that green mobility is also inclusive and equitable. Mobility has the potential to reinforce or reduce social inequalities, whether that be in improving access of communities to major economic centres and employment; or in creating vehicles and transport infrastructure for diverse bodies and abilities. It is estimated that one in five people in the UK have a disability, and we have a rapidly ageing population. If we are going to design an equitable green mobility system, then we need to better consider how we can design green mobility that is truly for everyone.

On October 14th, Design Council convened its first community of practice event with its Design Council Expert Network: bringing together a group of over 60 leading designers and architects working across the UK. The purpose of these sessions is to collectively explore current issues in designing for planet, and to develop insight into how design can most effectively support the UK to achieve net-zero by 2050. This summary shares our collective insight into How design can help us to create a net-zero mobility infrastructure that is equitable and inclusive.

Three Perspectives on Designing Inclusive Green Mobility

Three experts from architecture and urban design shared their perspectives on how design can help to create inclusive green mobility.

Andrew Cameron: Design the right infrastructure in places before you design the mobility solutions

For urban designer Andrew Cameron, inclusive green mobility starts with good urban planning. Rather than seeing mobility as a transport or technology challenge, we should instead frame mobility as ‘the glue between our buildings’. With this re-framing, connectivity becomes the core issue for creating inclusive mobility and places. Sharing the example of Newark Market, which has seen the same patterns of movement for people over 400 years, Cameron offers a challenge for designers to first get the basics right in our places, before jumping to new vehicles.

To help illustrate this point consider Poundbury in Dorchester, which aimed to create a walkable neighbourhood with all amenities within a 10-minute walk from a person’s home. Through creating this mixed-use neighbourhood, with schools, workplaces, retail, and leisure activities all within walking distance, opportunities for different ways of getting from place to place are opened-up, that did not rely on dominant transport modes such as cars. Over a third of residents now walk to work in the area, and local economic activity is improved.

Getting the basics in place-making right is the first step, before you start to design transport solutions. For Cameron, the ingredients for this include: using design guides and codes; creating pedestrian priority streets; creating desire lines that people want to travel on; using Copenhagen crossings (which give priority to pedestrians over vehicles) and tree-lined streets which help create aesthetically pleasing routes and can provide shade for walkers. Learning from historical patterns of mobility in a place can also help to ensure you design the right flows of movement in the area, as in the case of Newark Market.

Designing the right patterns of movement and place can create the conditions needed for more inclusive transport options to be overlaid on an area.

Razieh Zandieh: Use qualitative research tools to build the evidence base of user needs, fears, desires, and aspirations for more inclusive urban strategies.

The UK’s population is rapidly ageing, with over 60s being the fastest growing age cohort in the country. As an age-group, older adults are at higher risk of physical issues that limit their mobility; loneliness that can disincentivise travel to see family and friends; and for some significant economic issues that make some forms of travel unaffordable. There are already international design guides and standards for creating more inclusive streets, such as the Global Street Design Guide, which contains evidence-based research on the minimum requirements for inclusive streets and pathways. Whilst implementing these standards consistently would already be a significant step forward to creating more inclusive mobility, going beyond these to address people’s desires, behaviours and needs will help to drive a transition to more inclusive and sustainable mobility.

Urban theorist Razieh Zandieh researches spatial inequalities that can reduce mobility and travel for communities in cities. Based at Manchester University, her team’s research focuses on how urban design could support more inclusive green travel solutions, focusing on providing more nuanced support for older adults to undertake more journeys through walking.

In their research, the team used a mixture of methods: GPS monitoring to follow the journeys older adults involved the research undertook; GIS mapping (using software to spatially map data, e.g. air quality); questionnaires, and walking interviews. Walking interviews also allowed older adults to identify ‘on the ground’ issues that encouraged or disincentivised walking, and gave a richer insight into the values, motivations and behaviours that could unlock more inclusive active travel in the city. Their research found that access to green-space and recreational areas increased walking, as did creating spaces that felt safe, quiet and were beautiful. At the same time, they found that high-density areas and low street connectivity were off-putting.

By undertaking in-depth research with affected communities, designers can build the evidence-base to develop informed urban strategies that promote inclusive active travel.

Mike Axon: We need to start with a positive vision if we are to create inclusive and sustainable mobility.

Transport planning has been both a part of the problem and a solution to designing inclusive green mobility. For Director Mike Axon, transport planning was historically governed by the rule of ‘predict and provide’: you forecast the number of cars on the road and built sufficient infrastructure to accommodate it. This historical focus on increasing transport capacity for cars was not only in-effective, but a victim of what is known as Jervon’s Paradox: increasing road capacity has been shown through research to simply increase the number of cars on the road. The result is that more traditional planning approaches have prevented inclusive and active mobility solutions.

In recent years transport planning has begun to be informed by a ‘vision and validate’ approach to mobility, developed in the work of urban theorist Phil Jones. This approach starts with a positive vision for forms of life in a city or place, and then asks how mobility solutions could help to achieve it. By adopting this more systemic perspective, inclusivity can be built in front and centre to future visions, rather than a sole focus on increasing car provision. Design clearly has a role to play in helping to co-create these positive visions with communities, and to visualise them in compelling ways, as well as informing the mobility solutions they require.

A vision and validate approach has informed Axon’s work at Vectos, who have been focusing on how urban planning can incentivise active-travel and local living. Their work focuses on creating mobility hubs that fuse multiple transport modes with community spaces; using design to foster local living by creating neighbourhoods where work, leisure, education, and commerce are within 15-minute distances of each other; and building the infrastructure for active travel. Their recent urban development Silverstone Park — a 2 million square foot business park — was able to save £20 million that would have otherwise been spent on a motorway-style junction, instead creating a positive vision with active travel solutions such as cycle-highways, and public amenities that would stagger travel times to and from the park, by providing services workers could use before and after their working days.

By seeing mobility as the means, rather than the goal, and starting with a positive vision of an inclusive city, we can design the infrastructure needed for inclusive mobility.

How do designers need to work to create more equitable and sustainable green mobility?

The following recommendations on how designers can work to create more equitable and sustainable green mobility emerged from collective discussion with over 60 Design Council Experts as a part of the session:

1) Tell the right stories and communicate a positive vision

Low carbon mobility solutions are often seen as punitive restrictions on personal travel (such as reducing use of cars), rather than life-enhancing. However, there is a wealth of evidence of the benefits on health and wellbeing of green travel solutions such as cycling, walking, e-bikes, electric buses, and trains. As argued by Mike Axon, hopeful and positive visions for places through a ‘vision and validate’ approach can also ensure that mobility solutions are inclusive and meet genuine need.

Designers can help to build support with local communities, central and local government, and developers for inclusive infrastructure for green travel through:

• Having the evidence at hand of the economic, environmental and health-benefits of green mobility solutions for people and planet.
• Designing hopeful visions of alternatives through vision and validate, speculative design, visioning and prototyping (approaches we have been exploring on our recent research into system-shifting design and the systemic design framework).
• Get developers and local authorities to experience diverse mobility needs through empathy tools to communicate their importance. For instance, the RNIB uses visual impairment tools to communicate the experience of sight-loss.

2) Treat mobility as an issue of design justice

Mobility is too often seen as a technical problem of getting people and goods from one place to another. However, our mobility systems benefit some and exclude others. Adopting a design justice approach centres the voices of those who are marginalised by systems of power and design. This re-framing allows us to see that all design decisions have differing impacts and consequences for those affected and can reinforce or reduce inequities. For instance, certain kinds of vehicles might only be accessible to particular people due to cost, or ergonomics. Investing in mobility in particular places might drive gentrification or lead to regional wealth inequalities. Within a mobility context, designers can reframe mobility as a design-justice issue through:

• Always design for the most vulnerable or marginalise person affected by a new design and consider the wider ripple-effects of that intervention.
• Orient your project through the design-justice principles and consider how those will be embodied through your project.
• Design with marginalised communities and involve them in determining the impact and aspirations of a new mobility intervention, rather than simply for them.

3) Consider the before and after of the journey

Many barriers and mobility challenges can emerge in the moments before and after a journey. For example, research shows that if the distance from someone’s home to public transport increased beyond 400 metres, the willingness of people to use it decreases significantly. Physical barriers on a station platform can prevent people from accessing a train. Having a lack of bicycle storage at your destination can disincentivise active travel.

• Make reference to relevant design policies and codes to ensure that the project meets the needs of diverse bodies and abilities. For instance, the Department of Transport’s Inclusive Mobility Guide, or the Global Design Street Guide.
• Use design tools and methods such as journey-mapping to understand the before and after of using a transport solution, to understand the wider context.
• Engage diverse communities to understand the multiple journey ‘experiences’ that can unfold with different starting and end-goals, as was also explored in this project by LiveWork studio with Transport for London.

4) Design with diverse communities

As with treating mobility as a design justice issue, designers can go far beyond reliance on data to develop solutions (as was the case in previous traffic-focused ‘predict and provide’ approaches) to develop qualitative insight and to co-design solutions with communities. As Sasha Constanza-Chock has argued, attempting to imagine other people’s experience is “no substitute for robust engagement with marginalised users and user communities”, and can often lead to designers responding to their own biases and assumptions. Designers can address this through:

• Involve affected and marginalised communities early in the design process and reach out to those who have not previously engaged with a mobility issue or intervention. (This is something Design Council have been exploring through our current research with Network Rail, asking citizens to help us imagine the future rail station in Explore Station).
• Use qualitative user-research tools such as walking-interviews and ethnography to learn from affected communities on their own terms, and to draw on insights beyond the verbal or quantitative.
• Invest time, budget, and expertise in creating inclusive and equitable forms of engagement and co-design, to bring-in multiple perspectives.

5) Champion joyful and inclusive experiences

If we are to encourage citizens to adopt new transport modes and to embrace low-carbon solutions such as cycling and walking, we need to create joyful and inclusive experiences. And that is true both of the transport vehicles we design, and the places within which we use them. For example, Razieh Zandieh’s observations that a sense of beauty, safety, and quiet was crucial for increasing active travel for older adults.

Design is well-placed to translate new technologies, electric vehicles, and urban infrastructures for active travel, into fun, easy, pleasurable, and meaningful experiences.

Why Design for Inclusive and Sustainable Mobility?

In their latest Net Zero Research and Innovation Framework, the UK government emphasised that green mobility is far more than a technical challenge, but a social one too. It will require a deep understanding of the needs, desires, and aspirations of people, to develop systems that all people want to use. Equally, it will need to address regional needs and inequalities, understanding of the aspirations of local communities, and the ripple effects that innovative solutions have across UK, including in rural areas. By designing inclusively, and with a focus on promoting design justice, design can play a key role in shaping new places, technologies, and services to foster a green mobility system.

The recommendations here are just the start.

Further Reading and Resources

Challenges of the Future: Mobility, by Dr Jiayu Wu, 2020 provides an overview of current developments in design research around future of mobility, identifying case-studies and current centres of excellence in design-led mobility research. (link HERE). Report

Innovate UK’s UK Transport Vision 2050 outlines a future vision for transport and the research and investment needed to achieve it. (link HERE). Report

Sustainable and accessibly transport requires government innovation, by Head of Impact and Insight and Design Council Expert Zung Nguyen Ho argues the case for more inclusive sustainable transport (link HERE) Essay.

From What If to What Next Podcast with Rob Hopkins, asks in episode 33 what cities without cars might look like, in conversation with Carbon Brown and Melissa Bruntlett. (link HERE). Podcast

Connected Places Catapult Podcast, explores connectivity and mobility in all their senses. Their recent episode shares the highlights of their recent Active Travel Summit (link HERE). Podcast.

Sharing Cities, Digital Social Market Playbook, 2020 provides practical tools and recommendations for citizen engagement with digital technologies, to encourage more sustainable behaviours and places. (link HERE). Toolkit.

Sharing Cities, Improving urban mobility: e-bike sharing playbook, 2020 provides practical recommendations for city planners and urban designers on establishing e-bike schemes in cities. (link HERE). Toolkit.

The city is my homescreen, 2019 is Dan Hill’s account of all the various design disciplines that are needed to create sustainable neighbourhoods, with a case study into Oslo Bikes, and how they can have wider benefits for local employment and further data-driven services. (link HERE). Blog.

Global Street Design Guide by NACTO, 2016, provides a global baseline of measures and principles to design accessible, inclusive, and safer streets. (link HERE). Toolkit.

Vectos’ report on the role of spatial planning in achieving Net Zero, 2020, explores how we could achieve an 80% reduction in surface transport emissions by 2050 (link HERE). Report

Upsteam Scot has been designing journeys for those with dementia and other disabilities through its Future Journeys Observatory, using behavioural methods as well as comics and drama to engage with people.

Policy Lab worked with Superflux, Strange Telemetry, and the Royal Academy of Engineering to use ethnography and speculative design methods to imagine the future of rail which informed the Government’s Rail Passenger strategy. Read about it here.

Graphic design and wayfinding are important elements of low-carbon and active travel. Check out Leap’s work to show the people of Exeter how to get around here.

The fashion industry can play a significant role in inclusive mobility by creating smart garments and those that can support active travel. Read The Powerhouse’s fashion x mobility forecast here.

Bernard Hay, Lead Design Programme Manager