REBALANCE moves from the assumption that the mobility culture that currently prevails in the world (including Europe) has led to unsustainable travel patterns, in social and environmental terms. The mobility choices made by users, fall short of ensuring a sustainable balance between traffics and places, freedom and welfare, creativity, security and public health. Therefore, there is a need for a critical examination in particular of the meaning and value(s) of the European mobility culture of today and how they translate into the current forms of mobility lifestyles, mobility policies as well as predominant practices of transport appraisal techniques. This is why REBALANCE was set to write down in black and white the ‘Language of the Present’, and critically examine European values and needs, including those not yet considered also in the light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. REBALANCE aim was to mobilise around the New Mobility Cultures and Policies Hub high level European minds, but also transport stakeholders and society at large, in a constructive dialogue to rethink about the way we move and the effective needs of mobility we have in a common effort to imagine the European mobility culture of tomorrow.
Thanks to a tailor-made foresight exercise, converging on a shared vision of an alternative mobility narrative chosen according to explicit political and cultural values endorsed by different interest groups and stakeholders, the project was set to provide the European Institutions with insights and practical hints (the roadmap) for planning a transformative transport research policy in future R&I programmes based on shared cultural values among Europeans. The political roadmap/policy guide was intended to combine soft/hard and short-/long-term policies: testing the interest of soft policies, such as better information, communication, and education (‘nudges’); as well as regulatory changes, key incentives, subsidies and investments. REBALANCE purpose was also to propose a new definition of ‘public interest’ under EU law to assess sustainable and transformative transport policies in European and national regulations.
The final synthesis of REBALANCE activities is the ‘Manifesto for a New Mobility Culture’ to make sure that shared values and beliefs of Europeans are embedded in the fundamentals of the new transport policy, and lay the foundations for a cultural change in the way people understand mobility and take decisions on transport policies.
