Digital platforms and the future of urban mobility

数字平台无处不在。2015年，美国流量排名前十的网站都是平台，而中国流量排名前八的网站都是平台企业。许多正在试验的平台似乎正在重新配置城市服务。也就是说，它们正在扰乱城市服务和交通、能源、水和废物处理等系统目前的组织方式。城市平台为城市生活的许多领域带来了挑战和机遇。在这里，我们关注城市平台的一个领域，即城市交通，在这个领域，大量的平台以不同的方式出现，在特定的地方有各种各样的目的。这些平台包括打车平台（如Uber）、行程规划平台（如CityMapper）、按需巴士服务平台（Vamooz）、移动票务和票价管理平台（JustRide）、拼车平台（Faxi）和自行车共享平台（BIXI）。虽然关于数字平台作为一种宏观现象有很多争论，但其中大部分都是“地方盲”的，因此忽略了不同城市地区的实际情况。该研究的总体目标是了解数字移动平台如何重塑城市-区域交通系统及其治理，以及这对地理和社会的影响、机遇和挑战是什么。为了实现这一目标，该项目有四个目标：1。批判性地分析城市平台创新的各种全球轨迹，以及它们是如何被想象和组织的；评估与这些不同城市平台创新轨迹相关的知识和政策如何在城市背景下循环；3. 3 .研究这些轨迹如何在城市-区域背景下结合和嵌入，以及对社会空间重组有何影响；通过城市-区域交通战略和政策，以及就城市交通政策和城市交通的未来进行更广泛的公众辩论，发展产生社会影响的途径。我们计划将研究成果整合到提案的总体目标中，即城市平台创新的全球轨迹如何以及为什么结合并嵌入特定的城市区域背景。综合研究结果以及如何帮助我们预测城市交通的未来，将在一本书长的专著中发表。除了对学术辩论产生重大影响外，建议强调移动平台和城市-区域重组对城市-区域交通战略和政策制定同样重要-特别是考虑到这一创新领域的快速变化和高度不可预测的特征。英国国家政府认识到，未来的交通是一项重大挑战，英国城市地区和其他地方国家地区是“促进实验和试验”的关键场所（DfT, 2019）。通过其工业战略（IS）白皮书及其未来流动性：城市战略，政府寻求将英国定位为塑造未来流动性的“世界领导者”，因为我们“正处于我们如何在城镇，城市和农村周围移动人员，商品和服务的深刻变化的尖端”（HM政府，2017年，第48页）。从事城市-区域交通政策的人面临着深刻的挑战，即未来的城市交通是什么样子，需要最新的、与政策相关的研究，以确定当前的交通模式，以及各种新的城市交通服务创新如何重新配置这些模式，以满足战略重点和当前和未来的交通需求。通过与城市-区域决策者建立关系，解决这一研究需求有可能有助于缩小政策制定的知识差距。

Digital platforms are pervasive. In 2015 every one of the top ten trafficked US websites was a platform and platform businesses hold each of the top eight spots in Chinese web traffic rankings. Many platforms that are being experimented with appear to be reconfiguring urban services. That is to say, they are disrupting the ways in which urban services and systems such as mobility, energy, water and waste are currently organised. Urban platforms pose challenges and opportunities for many areas of urban life. Here we focus on one domain of urban platforms, urban mobility, where a large number of platforms are emerging in different ways and to a variety of ends in particular places. These include, for example platforms that focus on ride-hailing (e.g. Uber), journey planning (e.g. CityMapper), on-demand bus services (Vamooz), mobile ticketing and fare management (JustRide), carpooling (Faxi), and bicycle sharing (BIXI). While there is much debate about digital platforms in general as a macro phenomenon, much of this is 'place-blind' and consequently misses much of what is happening on the ground in different urban areas. The overarching aim of the research is to understand how digital mobility platforms are re-shaping city-regional transport systems and their governance - and what the geographical and social implications, opportunities and challenges of this are. To address this aim, the project has four objectives:1. To critically analyse the various global trajectories of urban platform innovation and how they are imagined and organised;2. To assess how knowledge and policy associated with these various urban platform innovation trajectories circulate between urban contexts; 3. To investigate how these trajectories combine and embed in city-regional contexts and with what implications for socio-spatial re-organisation;4. To develop pathways to societal impact via city-regional transport strategy and policy and through wider public debate on urban transport policy and the future of urban mobility.We plan to integrate the research findings into a contribution towards the overarching aim of the proposal, i.e. how and why global trajectories of urban platform innovation combine and embed in specific city-regional contexts. The integrated findings and how this can help us to anticipate the future of urban mobility, will be presented in a book-length monograph.As well as having significant implications for academic debate, the proposed emphasis on mobility platforms and city-regional restructuring is equally significant to city-region transport strategy and policy development - especially given the fast changing and highly unpredictable characteristics of this innovation area. The UK national government recognises the future of mobility as a critical challenge and English city-regions and other sub-national areas as key places for 'fostering experimentation and trialling' (DfT, 2019). Through both its Industrial Strategy (IS) White Paper and its Future of mobility: urban strategy, Government seeks to position the UK as becoming a 'world leader' in shaping the future of mobility as we are 'on the cusp of a profound change in how we move people, goods and services around our towns, cities and countryside' (HM Government, 2017, p.48). Those engaged in city-regional transport policy are faced with profound challenges about what the future of urban mobility looks like and require up to date, policy-relevant research that identifies current mobility patterns and how various new urban mobility service innovations may reconfigure these to meet strategic priorities and current and future mobility needs. Through building relationships with city-regional policymakers, addressing this research need has the potential to contribute to closing a knowledge gap for policy development.