Namur’s Intelligent Transport System and the Moulding of a Flexibility Citizenship

In my contribution, I present the results of the doctoral research conducted on the use of so-called intelligent transport systems (ITS) in the context of urban mobility governance. I focus on the creation, implementation and exploitation of such a system in the city of Namur, a Belgian mid-size city that has been building its own ITS since 2015. Namur is of great interest as a research object given the material and ‘digital material’ architecture of its system, and especially given the aims of the latter. The city’s ITS relies on automated number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and CCTV cameras, along with variable message signs and a specific internet platform. The municipality showcases it as a public tool for pre-trip information: it expects users to consult the real-time information provided online to select their means of locomotion, and to follow variable message signs to adapt their route to the road traffic. It emphasises the ultimate goal of the system: the steering of individual mobility choices to reduce polluting emissions and optimise daily journeys. This contribution exposes the analysis of the empirical material collected in Namur in 2023, including press and institutional documents, 19 semi-structured interviews, 5 observation rounds in the ‘ITS control room’ and several periods of intense personal use of the system. It specifically addresses the following questions, at the heart of the workshop: what are the aims of Namur’s ITS and their impact of the latter’s architecture? How was it built and how is participation envisioned within the ITS? How is it employed by local civil servants and what are the limitations of the system? Finally, it compares the results with previous accounts of smart city citizenship and participation.