Addressing the urgent need to combat climate change necessitates a shift towards sustainable mobility, particularly in urban settings. While active mobility solutions like cycling offer significant ecological and health benefits, their promotion should not neglect issues of potential socio-spatial inequalities. This contribution argues that a socially just mobility transition requires moving beyond traditional distributive justice frameworks. Drawing on critical social science perspectives, it advocates for a multidimensional understanding of justice encompassing recognition, procedural, and epistemic dimensions. Therefore, this contribution addresses the question of how social justice can be conceptualized and applied in the context of everyday mobility practices to foster more inclusive and livable cities. By considering how diverse needs, experiences, and knowledge shape everyday mobility, this contribution emphasizes the necessity of integrating a multidimensional perspective of social justice into the planning and implementation of mobility transitions. The equitable development to sustainable mobility options is crucial to avoid reinforcing existing socio-spatial disparities in mobility practices and urban development. Through an exploration of the practical application of this justice lens to everyday mobility, this discussion aims to enrich the academic discourse on achieving socially just and sustainable urban futures, offering valuable insights for diverse urban contexts navigating similar mobility transformations.
Carmen Kern is a research associate at the RCE Graz-Styria (Centre for Sustainable Social Transformation). Her research focuses on sustainable urban and regional development, with a particular interest in questions of socio-spatial justice. Currently, she is involved in the European DUT-project SPECIFIC (Social Practices Enabled by Cycling In FIfteen-minute Cities).