Participatory co-development of sustainable transport scenarios: case of Madrid

Sustainable mobility policies are unlikely to succeed without targeted efforts to tackle the significant disagreement between different social groups over the need for change and the specific actions that such change should entail. In this context, we describe a participatory scenario development process for strategic planning of sustainable mobility in the city of Madrid, Spain, motivated by the need for the city to align with international directives and recommendations on greenhouse gas emissions and air quality. The scenarios were co-constructed through semi-structured interviews with stakeholders representing academia, business, public administration and civil society. Systematic analysis of stakeholders’ responses allowed four distinct scenarios to emerge: Remote Working, The Fifteen-Minute City, Electric City and Public City. These scenarios are focussed on implementation and are not tied to specific policy objectives or aspirational goal-oriented scenario frameworks like the shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs). In this sense they provide a basis for the preparation of realistic and achievable sustainable mobility strategies to address the twin challenges of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, aspects that are rarely addressed together in urban policy. Participatory approaches of this kind can help to formulate consensus responses to societal problems in highly contested contexts like sustainable transport planning.