Sharing or Platform Urban Mobility? Propertization from Mass to MaaS

This chapter will discuss smart urban mobility within the context of the sharing economy. After a brief introduction on the history of urban mobility, it will look at the application of sharing economy models to smart urban mobility, such as ride-sharing, car- and bike-sharing programs and e-hailing services. The discussion will contextualize the evolution of peer mass production dynamics into Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). My focus is the fundamental data ownership and protection issues that will arise from mobility solutions consumed as services through centralized gateways and platforms. I criticize the neo-liberalist perspective that has gradually changed the sharing economy into the platform economy and argue that it brought about unfulfilled expectations and increasing inequalities. After moving this critique, I plead for the application of Ostrom’s approach to commons to smart urban mobility and, in particular to MaaS. In conclusion, I argue that smart urban mobility should develop upon what I call a 3C model: commons, collaboration and crowdsourcing.