URBANITE General

The way in which this first SopoLab session in Amsterdam was framed as follows: 

Drawing on conversations, desk research, interviews and individual discussions, the SoPoLab meetings included those who had participated in previous discussions to formally consider local attitudes, challenges, capacities and current contexts in relation to disruptive technologies and participatory mobility. 

Other goals of these meetings were to:

• Confirm a common understanding about the role, possibilities, and limits of URBANITE 
• Understand the challenges and risks the municipality faces with bike/urban mobility
• Position URBANITE in the context of other existing mobility initiatives in Amsterdam, both internal and external to public initiatives within the municipality.

After the session, the main findings that can be considered as outcomes are:

• Confirmed a common understanding about the role, possibilities, and limits of URBANITE – specifically, that the Amsterdam pilot would not focus on establishing new modes of gathering bicycle data. Rather, the pilot will focus on identifying and unifying existing (open) data sources; and on citizen inclusion and communication regarding new mobility policies and approaches.
• Identified challenges in bike mobility – with specific relevance the URBANITE pilot in Amsterdam, most specifically the context challenges of positioning the project amongst many others; the social challenges of engaging citizens in topics of mobility (particularly during Covid); and the technical challenges of identifying and linking appropriate data sources.
• Confirmed the position of URBANITE in Amsterdam as being about gathering existing (open) sources of bicycle data that aims to establish citizen participation in discussions surrounding mobility data as a central component of DDMDM in Amsterdam.

This session took place on 26th of January 2021 and 3rd of February carried out via Zoom videoconference service where 11 people participated.