Mobility with people at the heart
Lund is a city where there are many people with very solid knowledge in their areas of expertise. However, in order to solve today's societal challenges, it is often not enough to have access to the very best people — it may sometimes be necessary to cross paths of knowledge from very different fields in order to create something completely new. This is what Future by Lund confirmed in the very first member and partner meeting under the auspices of the new association through a “Hjemma hos” with the member Trivecteur Trafic as host. In addition to the traffic consultants at Trivector Traffic was also Morten Kjaerum, director at Raoul Wallenberg Institute (RWI) with and presented the Rauol Wallenberg Institute and their work on human rights. (Link to interview with Morten Kjaerum)
The combination of mobility and human rights was chosen on the basis that Lund in 2018 became the Nordic region's first city for human rights (MR-stad) and that Future by Lund has been working with “Movings Things & People” as an innovation area for many years. The fact that Lund is an MR-city means that the municipal organization has so far adopted a systematic approach to working with human rights where the idea permeates the work — for example, with policies, strategies and actions that can cover everything from security, education and care to urban building.
To understand what the combination can mean, we can take an example from some cities in the world where it has become clear how important it is to talk about mobility and human rights together, since it has sometimes been seen that public transport has been poorly developed in socially vulnerable neighbourhoods. Looking at it from a human rights perspective, residents of these neighbourhoods would, on the contrary, be given extra opportunities to be able to take public transport to the swimming pool, the library or to sports activities. For many, mobility is a prerequisite for access to work, education and healthcare, all of which count as human rights.
For Lund, the combination of human rights and mobility could potentially mean something else. In order for the members to start thinking about this, Trivector, which has a wide range of knowledge in mobility, contributed an overview of research in the field.
- The link between social sustainability and transport is about having a justice perspective, says Christian Dymén at Trivector. All people should be able to move and take part in society. We have historically had a car-centric society that has fostered middle-aged men. By linking transport and human rights, we can focus on other factors. For example, if you look at social capital, which is about trust in society, you can see how important it is to provide residents of socially vulnerable areas with public transport. It increases trust in the community through improved access to public transport but also through a signal value that is created when you see that the community is investing. This means that you should not only count costs and revenues, but also look at other benefits when assessing social contributions.
(Link to report: Social impact and benefit assessments in transport planning)
The participants were then able to conduct their own reconnaissance on the combination of human rights and mobility using the experts' background facts. The discussions covered, among other things, solutions with more local services to reduce travel, more use of digital technology to tailor solutions for people with different needs, better public transport in rural areas and villages, but also an idea of using Lund as “The best playground in Sweden” — a place where people experiment and develop new solutions. The meeting was the start of a process and the work will continue within Future by Lund.