Namur’s ‘intelligent transport system’: a critical analysis of mobility regulation in the digital era

This communication investigates the regulation of urban mobilities induced by smart mobility projects. Thousands of cities around the world have adopted "smart city" plans since the beginning of the 2000s. A large part of these plans consist in the reduction of resource consumption in the city, be it water, power or time. In this context, the infrastructure is represented as the locus of the optimisation of urban life, hence the appearance of concepts such as smart grid, smart environment and smart mobility, for instance. So-called smart mobility projects focus on the citizen use of roads and means of transport when the latter across the city. They mobilise whole sociotechnical systems that include sensors, data, algorithms and digital interfaces to analyse in real time the state of transportation networks. Public authorities are then in a position to intervene directly, either by adapting flexible transport infrastructure or steering citizens through digital media. This contribution explores the preliminary results of my doctoral research on this topic, with a focus on Namur's so-called "intelligent transport system".