You can't disrupt the city

Mobility disrupters go wrong when they think of cities as hardware searching for better software.

BY IAN DULL & JEFF RISOM

The city isn’t an app – So why do we keep treating it that way?

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN in the state of transportation. Our research into people on-the-move for over 20 years has shown that even the basics of mobility are a challenge. But it’s not just the transit authorities and car companies and a global pandemic who are responsible. In the last few years, the explosion of new ride-hailing services, delivery apps, app-rented scooters or mopeds, and on-demand vehicle ac-cess has left cities chaotic, and awash in the brightly colored logo of the next mobility disrupter.

Welcome to the platform wars, playing out in a city near you. Mobility disrupters around the world have been brash-ly trying to win over customers, drivers, and cities with new promises of mobility – easier, (at least temporarily) cheaper, more personal, more ubiquitous, and – with scooters, mo-peds and bike-shares – fundamentally different. They have reached every continent and seemingly every street, taking the world by storm, if not by force. That was until the pandemic – with more people turning to biking, walking, or their own cars – mobility disrupters seemed to think them-selves unstoppable.

The truth has always been shakier: cities were restricting mobility services (or shutting them down all together) long before the pandemic, as London tried to do to Uber in 2019 – for the second time. That’s because cities have been breaking: citizens and municipalities have woken up to the exploitative treatment of drivers, how Uber has brought drivers and taxis to fisticuffs, the new safety realities, the congestion, and the price of public spaces littered with tech trash in the form of e-scooters. Even Wall Street had taken notice before the pandemic hit: valuations were volatile at best and mobility disrupters were scrambling to find profitability anywhere they could.

But, if these mobility companies offer the future of mobility, why the hostility? Like the software companies they as-pire to be, mobility disrupters have largely approached cities as tabula rasa, blank canvases to experiment on, upgrade, and optimize – without understanding their people and cultures first. It’s the ‘move fast and break things’ approach to urban transport.

Yet cities aren’t hardware searching for better software; nor do they represent the blank canvas of the internet. They are complex, living organisms – made up of users, yes – but also citizens, governments, laws, and mountains of cultural and political baggage. In their goal of dominating every city, mo-bility disrupters have often forgotten what it means for people to move around their own cities. And in throwing their hats in with users’ individualistic, smartphone-addled impulses, they have forgotten governments’ and citizens’ collectivistic impulses – yes, the same people who are now beginning to notice the damage to their streets. The warning signs have been blinking for years: new restrictions, grinding races-to-the-bottom, and wasted resources all spent on taking over cities – risking their own brands and disappointing investors in the process.

IS THERE ANOTHER WAY?

As social scientists and designers investigating mobility for our clients, ReD Associates and Gehl have together amassed one of the world’s largest repositories of ethnographic data – thousands of hours from hundreds of cities – on how people move, spend time, and make the most of their cities, before the pandemic and since. We have observed the gamut, from individual Uber rides to family outings to transport hubs teeming with urban commuters at rush hour. We’ve studied every type of mobility – even life with a personal chauffeur or in a self-driving car.

Together, we have observed that succeeding with new mobility innovations relies on building on the mobility culture a city already has – not vying to replace it. In their rush to win, mobility disrupters have missed out on alleviating the lived challenges city dwellers experience in getting around their cities – like safety, productivity, or social connection – but can’t solve on their own. To appeal to both the user and the city, mobility disrupters don’t just need better brands or software: they need to understand how to truly fill the gaps in today’s mobility, connecting their innovations to where cities need it. That starts with understanding the cultures of how, where, and why people move.

HOW: The real software – The cultures of how people move

MOST CITIES HAVE GROWN organically – even chaoti-cally – over time, and cities have evolved distinctive mobility cultures to match. A prime example is LA’s distinctive ‘car culture.’ As any Angeleno will tell you, their car is a home on wheels, and a ticket-to-explore LA’s cities-within-a-city. Little wonder many Angelenos loath to give up a car for public transport, even when it’s neither the fastest nor safest option – 75% of Angelenos reported driving to work before the pandemic, the highest reported percentage ever surveyed, and even though accidents initially dipped during the pandemic as more people stayed home, they quickly jumped back up to normal levels under the carnal automotive temptation of wide-open streets. In contrast, public transit, or riding the bus as one Angeleno put it, makes you feel like the “mobility underclass.” Whereas Uber fits seamlessly into LA’s transport gap: attracting people who want to have a drink out, or freeing up parents to read to their kids while crossing the sprawl. As one Angeleno put it, Uber “makes LA more LA.”

In London, it’s another story all together. London transit is London culture: the iconic double-decker buses, the criss-crossing colors of the London Tube Map, the polite echoes of ‘Mind the Gap,’ and the encyclopedic knowledge of its Black Cabbies have together created perhaps the most iconic transit system in the world – a deep source of pride for Londoners, and their ever-present sense of orientation. It is a cornerstone of London social life: we have seen parents look to the Tube as a safe way to teach teenagers to explore, learning the city’s ins-and-outs as the adults do – Underground. That sets up high expectations and a resistance to innovations that threat-en the future of these cherished cultural icons: one Londoner once told us how he gave up on Uber after a disoriented driv-er crisscrossed the Thames three times – giving him twenty minutes “on red alert,” not relaxed compared to a journey in the trusted hands of a Black Cabbie. Disrupting London’s transport means disrupting a way of life – one that clashes with aimless digital wayfinding and the laissez-faire gig economy of ride-hailing apps.

The culture of how people move is also about the neighborhoods within the city. LA’s car culture makes its rare walk-able spaces even more valuable: a place like Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade is a treasured space for locals to get to by bike, scooter, or on foot, only to walk around and linger. But when electric scooters, bikes, or too many cars crowd out valuable walking space, Angelenos get protective. One normally law-abiding father we studied admitted to once angrily throwing a Bird scooter in a canal – an exclamation point to show how mobility disrupters only work where they respect the norms and culture on the ground.

For mobility disrupters, the realities of how people move, and the culture that shapes, does not narrow opportunities, it only focuses them. Take LA’s public transit problem: de-spite many Angelenos reticence towards public transit, few can actually afford Uber as a consistent alternative to driving. This raises the question: how could ride-hailing technology reinvent what the bus means for Los Angeles, making it more intimate or on-demand – while keeping costs low? And given London navigates by the Tube map, what could Uber do to connect the familiar anchors of Tube lines or stations? Cities too have opportunities to shape and focus the mobility experience – carving out what types of mobility can operate where, yes, but also connecting mobility innovations to prevailing cultural norms. Where is the Transport for London-branded Uber map, or the double-decker bus for the ride-hailing era? Focusing on these white spaces in a city’s mobility culture – not the parts cities and citizens hold dear – helps to fit into the culture, not fight it. And in the process, it will turn new mobility brands into cherished allies of cities and citizens.

WHERE: The real software – The cultures of where people move

WHEN MOBILITY DISRUPTERS take aim at an entire city, they tend to compete with existing mobility infrastructure everywhere, assuming that all locations need to be better connected – some don’t. In many cities – even LA – public transit remains the fastest way to cross long distances and make many journeys, provided a destination is well-connect-ed. This is a commercial, not philosophical problem: 39% of the time ride hails in California have no passengers; 41% in NYC. When 40% of cars are empty, mobility disrupters’ understanding of where they’re needed is far from optimized.

Yet in most cities, there are enormous swathes of the population and geography that are underserved by current mobility options. These represent pockets of new value for mobility disrupters to own, while supporting cities’ infra-structure and city dwellers’ needs at the same time. For in-stance, Uber recently released statistics on the most common trips in New York City. The leader was not a landmark like the Empire State Building, transport hub, or airport, but the Queens Central Mall – home to purchase-laden, family or group schleps, where ride-hailing is a far superior alternative to the subway. But where is Uber home delivery, or a fixed neighborhood-to-mall price? A service connecting people to a community hub like the mall would solve a real need, while delivering higher utilization – and likely better retention of drivers, a growing problem.

Similarly, we have observed how residents of London’s town-like suburbs less served by public transport heavily rely on short-distance transport – by foot, bike, car, or bus, where they have them – to manage everyday errands, social visits, or pickups and drop-offs against unpredictable schedules. Yet e-scooters, e-bikes, or mopeds could just as easily deliver, if they were confined to the neighborhood, readily available, and cheap enough for everyday use. The resulting neighborhood pride and sense of ownership might even help with how many e-scooters get trashed.

Matching mobility modes to where they are needed can even impact more than the ease of getting around. LA’s legendary Sunset Strip has struggled to keep businesses alive in recent years: with thru-traffic and parking taking up 4/5 of the street space, pedestrians are discouraged from exploring and discovering new businesses in the area. Where is Uber’s dedicated shuttle service between the essential destinations and burdensome trips, or the dedicated legion of scooters de-signed to make it easier to explore the 1.6-mile Strip by busy day and raucous night? Not only do these ideas point to real needs from citizens, they speak to larger ambitions that cities have for regenerating areas and improving city life. Cities too can do much more to piggyback on mobility innovations: Why has New York not given bus lane access to ride-hailing drivers promising consistent service in transport dead-zones? Why has LA not used clever street design to create a ‘scoot-er park’ that brings Sunset back to life? With the pandemic putting pressure on public transport and our outdoor spaces, there’s more need than ever to think innovatively about how we fill the mobility gaps to get people where they want to go and do what they need to do.

Focusing mobility innovation on the craziness of down-town areas or trying to replace the metro on long-hauls may be obvious ways for new entrants to disrupt mobility. Yet it misses opportunities to meet untapped demand with solutions that are both more valuable to cities and citizens – and move into spaces that are cheaper to conquer and easier to protect.

WHY: The real software – The cultures of why people move

ON PAPER, MOBILITY ALWAYS looks like a question of getting from A to B, but there is more to mobility than just moving. While the pandemic may have altered some long-standing patterns of rush hour travel, the disruption has only clarified what has always been true of mobility – the stakes for every journey are different. Some trips are routine, about getting from A to B as fast as possible – but many more are about other kinds of experiences – unwinding to a podcast after a long day, time to be together as a family, see-ing something new with friends, being productive between distant meetings, or coordinating errands. Someone may get into a car or hope on public transport many times per day, but what she or he wants from the experience is rarely the same.

Mobility services have yet to cater to these experiences – but with both public transit and mobility disrupters seeing huge declines in ridership since the pandemic – they will need to. Public transit revolutionized cities by getting the masses around (largely) efficiently; the private car reshaped mobility by creating personal space for the masses and enabling point-to-point transit over long distances. But everyday urban journeys like the ones above point to a need to balance the trade-offs between public transit’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ mobility and the burden that the ‘personal’ mobility of the car creates. We have observed mobility disrupters show promise in solving some trade-offs: an innovation like UberXL makes group mobility easier – building togetherness, without needing to own an SUV; e-scooters bring fun and a sense of exploration to short-distance travel; and delivery apps worldwide have connected people to food (and much more) anywhere.

Yet these only represent the beginnings of a solution. In LA, for example, friends and families – spread across the sprawling city – will often try to meet up in transit, arranging ‘convoys’ together via text when routes might align. We’ve even observed ‘hand-offs’ at stoplights to connect kids or friends to different routes. What could ride-hailing tech do to plan these overlaps – and make them social, by getting everyone in the same car together for some of it? And how could an Uber-public transit partnership help people more reliably time linking up on bus routes or in the metro? In dense cities like London, people squeeze countless errands in on their journeys – taking detours before or after the Tube or bus. What could delivery platforms do to coordinate those errands for them en route? Rather than conquering trans-port, mobility disrupters have numerous opportunities to make some of the ways we need to move much better – often by working together.

A deeper understanding of why people move can even go beyond the journey itself to enjoying and thriving in the city itself. For one, mobility takes people where they want to spend time – sorely overlooked today. What if mobility companies spent time and resources trying to create the conditions in which people thrive first, and then tailored mobility options to support that? This is the approach Steelcase took when it first revolutionized the open office plan and then sold all the furniture to support that culture. It’s the same approach that former Steelcase and Ford CEO Jim Hackett took through a variety of innovation initiatives aimed at do-ing more than just disrupting mobility, but rather helping to shape the good life.

Mobility, too, shapes our health and well-being, short and long-term. Generation Z and Alpha (born from 2010) have already proven to be more climate-conscious and less likely to get a driver’s license, indicating that future mobility innovation will have to take individual and planetary health into account to be successful. Our work in South London where 52% of children age 12 are obese, indicates that fast food outlets will pay a premium to be located at transit stops and 2/3 of all observed activity of adolescents is waiting for transit. Could mobility disrupters and transit authorities work together to rethink how ‘catching’ mobility options can encourage walking, while making reducing congestion and local pollution? With reductions in congestion and air pollution during the pandemic, mobility’s role in helping cities thrive is only likely to grow.

Whether it is making time in transit more valuable, or helping city dwellers thrive long-term, mobility disrupters can build stronger and more valuable relationships with cities and citizens by understanding why they move in the first place.

Mobility as a service: A people-first way forward

TODAY, DISCUSSIONS OF MOBILITY as a service de-scribe a war of attrition: who will consolidate, how will they grind out market share, whom to lobby, will autonomy be the answer for profitability? And if mobility disrupters continue as they have, the attrition will only continue. However, the so-called mobility revolution is far from mature – it is in fact just getting started.

Mobility disrupters have the opportunity to build the new innovations that will make inroads with the cities they want to lobby, and the city dwellers they are spending wildly to keep. Targeting those innovations to an understanding of how, where, and why people move in their cities isn’t just smart de-risking – it is the future of what mobility disrupters need to deliver. After all, how, where, and why people move is a major component of the deep social, cultural and physical contracts that define a city – and cultivate and shape the expectations of the people who live there. That’s something that clever UX design alone won’t counteract, no matter how much sleeker or seamless it gets. The real opportunity for mobility disrupters – and mobility services generally – is to prove how indispensable they can be for improving those social, cultural, and physical contracts in each city. Mobility innovations should be sources of solutions, not new problems.

The pandemic has created an opportunity to do just that. Even as ridership is down – and rush hour traffic patterns are in flux – people remain on the move: though many are working from home, we still need to fulfil our social needs by seeing friends and family or getting a change of scenery with a different workspace, and fulfil everyday necessities with trips to the supermarket or other stores. For the manyworking from home, that means resulting journeys are more local – making ‘last mile’ mobility the entire journey and put-ting the onus on mobility providers to make the ‘last mile’ that much more compelling. For the many still going to work, lower traffic and transit ridership create new opportunities to reinvent mobility over long distances – finding ways to make it safer, more convenient, and flexible. With our normal pat-terns in flux, now is the time to reshape these social, cultural and physical contracts for the better.

While this may not sound like scalable tech from the outset, it can be. Though the mix of services needed by two different cities like London or LA may be unique, their problems are largely global: What city doesn’t need to make people safer, more productive, healthier, or face less pollution? Differenc-es are often questions of transport modes, segments, density, diversity, and proximity. And even if features are unique, a metro area like LA captures nearly 17 million people: creat-ing the helpful use case that makes a market loyal is a more efficient use of marketing dollars than subsidized prices or ad blasts; reimagining more helpful transit for more people would mean millions more in transit revenues.

There are many reasons mobility disrupters can bring about a brighter future. They are pushing older transit au-thorities to innovate; they are beginning to make stronger starts with making riding experiences fun, helpful or produc-tive. Yet new mobility companies won’t be able to seize the fuller potential of mobility until they pair innovation with a knowledge of how cities, and most importantly the people who call them home, really are.