Sharing or Platform Urban Mobility? Propertization from Mass to Maas
This Chapter will be discussing smart urban mobility within the context of the sharing economy. After a brief introduction on the history of urban mobility, this chapter will discuss the application of sharing economy models to smart urban mobility, such as ride-sharing, e-hailing services, bike-sharing programs, and car-sharing services. The discussion will contextualize the evolution of peer mass production dynamics into Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). The Chapter will focus on fundamental data ownership and protection issues that will arise from mobility solutions consumed as a service through centralized gateways and platforms. In this chapter, I criticize the neo-liberalist perspective that has morphed the sharing economy into the platform economy. As I argue, 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 Mobility as a Service (MaaS). In conclusion, I argue that smart urban mobility should develop upon what I call a 3C model: commons, collaboration and crowdsourcing