Searching for urban mobilities futures. Methodological innovation in the light of COVID-19

The global Covid-19 crisis reveals the very nature of the mobilized and interconnected risk society. Media discourse, everyday talk, science and arts process daunting questions such as Can we live a “normal” life, again?, What exactly will happen when the Corona pandemic becomes less dangerous? Can business, public and everyday life go back to how they used to be? These questions open up possibilities to rethink current forms of urban planning. In many ways this needs sophisticated methodologies for scenario building and modelling the possible paths for cities, collaboration, innovation, and creativity in finding appropriate solutions able to cope with pandemic situations. See Traditional and up to now functional divisions of labour and disciplinary boundaries between stakeholders need to be re-assessed. From 2014 to 2016 the authors conducted the explorative research project ‘Mobilities Futures and the City’ aiming to investigate the potentials of combining the methodology of future workshops with art-based co-creation approaches in order to create storylines about the future of cities and mobilities. The methodological approach developed in the project was tested in two 5-day future workshops, in Denmark and Germany respectively. Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 situation, the article presents the methodological parts of the project since it has innovative potential with respect to urban planning and rethinking the relations of mobilities and the city. The paper documents results from the workshops and discusses them towards lessons learned for transdisciplinary approaches in urban mobility planning.