Rationale

What kind of city do we want to live in? How will it differ from other cities? These are the central questions that need to be answered by a visioning exercise involving all stakeholders and citizens. A vision provides a qualitative description of a desired urban mobility future and serves to guide the development of appropriate planning measures. It needs to place transport back in the wider context of urban and societal development. In other words, how can transport contribute to a positive future?

The vision should be prepared while taking into account all of the policy perspectives it seeks to address, especially those of existing general city visions or strategic plans, urban and spatial planning, economic development, environment, social inclusion, gender equity, health, and safety.

To create awareness and broad acceptance, the public should be actively engaged in the vision building process and its outcomes. Citizens should get involved in developing the vision, e.g. via a dedicated workshop. Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning outcomes can only be successful if citizens understand the vision and if they support its broader goals.

Aims

• Agree on a widely supported common vision that builds on the results of the scenario discussions - a long-term goal for mobility development serves as a guide for the planning process.

• Broaden the perspective by looking beyond transport and mobility, e.g. at the quality of life, health, and land use.

• Strengthen the local community identity and the public’s collective ownership of the vision.

• Emphasise the political value of a SUMP and ensure the commitment of key actors and decision-makers.

Tasks

• Establish a representative group of key stakeholders that will be responsible for the development of the vision. This could be the SUMP ‘steering group’ created in Activity 1.4.

• Prepare, hold and follow up on stakeholder meetings. Different formats can be useful to achieve an open, respectful and fruitful dialogue (see visioning methods below, and Activity 1.4 for an overview of formats). At the first meeting, provide basic information to stakeholders to ensure a common level of knowledge. This should include information on any existing visions, as well as the results of the mobility analysis (Step 3) and the scenarios (Step 4). Use maps, visualisations and concrete examples from other cities as much as possible to inspire the discussions.

• Avoid secrecy and corporatism: use public hearings and make notes from stakeholder meetings public to guarantee transparency.

• Consider engaging citizens directly in the development of the vision, e.g. via meetings or workshops similar to the stakeholder meetings. At the very minimum, you should actively inform citizens about the vision building process (e.g. in a public relations campaign) and provide them with the possibility to give feedback on the draft vision. Take all contributions seriously, but be clear and open beforehand that not all suggestions can be followed and that decisions will have to be taken based on opinions that often contradict one another.

• Elaborate a draft vision that covers the entire urban agglomeration and all relevant aspects of sustainability, such as road safety, accessibility, liveability, noise and air quality. It should also take into account all modes and forms of transport, namely public and private; passenger and freight; motorised and non-motorised; and moving and stationary. Consider the results and discussions of scenarios when drafting the vision, e.g. by including the scenario or elements of scenarios that showed the best results and were most widely supported.

• Keep decision makers in the loop. Consider discussing the draft vision with leading politicians from all parties, which can also happen in informal meetings, to achieve broad ownership of the vision. It can be useful to conduct simple opinion polls with the public; the trends that these reveal can serve as arguments for convincing political decision-makers.

• Discuss the draft vision and feedback from citizens and decision-makers with stakeholders and agree on a final version.

• Publish the vision in a format that is easy to understand and use visualisations to communicate it. Disseminate the vision document widely, including by using the media (local press, radio, TV, social media).

Timing and coordination

• Builds on the mobility analysis (Step 3) and scenarios (Step 4).

• Scenarios and visions are strongly related, and the sequence of developing them can vary between different contexts or even run in parallel.

Checklist

✔ Stakeholder group for vision development established.
✔ Citizens actively involved in the vision building process.
✔ The first draft of the vision developed and discussed with citizens and decision-makers.
✔ Stakeholder agreement on the final draft of vision.
✔ Vision outcomes documented.