Mobility Cooperatives
* Article: From commodity to commons: Understanding the transformative potential of Mobility Cooperatives for just sustainability transitions. Emil Beemer, Gijs Diercks, et al. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, Volume 57, December 2025
URL = https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210422425000784?
“We investigate how communities organize shared mobility commons in cooperatives.”
Abstract
< “ This paper applies a mobility commons perspective to its embedded case study of Dutch mobility cooperatives - initiatives that create community ownership of electric vehicles on a local scale. “ >
Dominant approaches to mobility transitions appear unable to address persistent problems of unsustainability and injustice. However, where regime actors fail, we expect to see alternative movements developing. This paper investigates the transformative potential of one such alternative – Dutch mobility cooperatives. We draw on transitions and commons literature to understand the role of mobility cooperatives in challenging the Dutch mobility regime and contributing to just sustainability transitions. Based on a single embedded case study design of the Dutch mobility cooperative movement, our results indicate that cooperatives succeed in prefiguring an alternative system based on collective ownership, community spirit, and self-governance. However, they remain entangled with regime characteristics of commodification, an individualist car culture, and market-state governance. We contribute a conceptual framework contrasting mobility commons with the incumbent regime, a deeper understanding of mobility cooperatives and their transformative potential for just mobility transitions, and strategies to further develop this potential.”
Excerpts
Mobility Commons
Emil Beemer, Gijs Diercks, et al. :
“To understand the transformative potential of mobility cooperatives facing this (auto)mobility regime, we draw on the literature on commons. Since the seminal work of Elinor Ostrom, researchers have demonstrated the wealth of community ownership and governance initiatives in a variety of domains (Ostrom, 1990; van Laerhoven and Ostrom, 2007). Mobility commons (or commoning mobility) more specifically have been understood as a process towards more communal governance and a revaluing of mobility as a shared right (Nikolaeva et al., 2019, p. 8). This is a useful lens to challenge the incumbent automobility regime, as it is an alternative logic centring mobility justice as a self-organizing principle (Adey et al., 2021, p. 132; Sheller, 2018). Mobility cooperatives are a form of commoning since they challenge the key dimensions of ownership, culture and values, and governance practices. We elaborate this using the three tenets of commons identified by de Angelis– common good, community, and commoning - to arrive at a description of the transformative potential of commoning (de Angelis and Stavrides, 2010).”
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210422425000784?)
Commoning Mobility and Mobility cooperatives
Emil Beemer, Gijs Diercks, et al. :
The notion of ‘commoning mobility’ has been put forward by Nikolaeva et al. (2019) at the intersection of commons and mobilities research. While largely synonymous with mobility commons, the alteration of the term aligns with their meaning of commoning as a politics and logic intent on democratizing the movement, meaning, and practice of mobility (ibid, p.7). Movement refers to the physical act of transportation, meaning to the cultural images and representation of different forms of mobility, and practice to the embodied sense of everyday practices (Cresswell, 2010). Nikolaeva et al. (2019) demonstrate empirically how communities engage in commoning across these three dimensions. In Chile, for instance, citizens created a non-hierarchical coalition to challenge the construction of highways around Santiago, highlighting issues of mobility injustice, creating sufficient pressure on the regime to reroute the highways, and permanently establishing the right to public participation in planning processes (Nikolaeva et al., 2019, pp. 10–11). Their work depicts commoning as existing in direct tension and conflict with automobility regimes, where searching for a ‘pure’ commons is less valuable than identifying concrete steps towards democratization. In her work on mobility justice, Sheller (2018) similarly concludes that ‘mobile’ commons are essential for just mobility transitions. She further emphasizes commoning as a transformative logic, which “means protecting the capability for human and more-than-human shared mobilities and free spaces for movement by regulating excessive mobilities, limiting unnecessary speed, regulating corporations, pricing the externalities of transportation, and preventing its harms” (Sheller, 2018, p. 169).
Within this logic, mobility cooperatives can be understood as more distinct instances of commons. Schramm et al. (2024) discussed the French railway cooperative RailCoop, which seeks to offer an alternative to the state-owned SNCF and the paradigm of high-speed commuting by providing slower railway services across less connected areas of France. These authors are interested in both the specific socio-spatial context and the cooperative as a force for producing ‘difference’ that generates new ways of thinking and doing – what we would term its transformative potential (Schramm et al., 2024, p. 17). Glover (2016) argues that urban mobility systems, and many constituent elements like public transport and roads, ought to be conceptualized as commons. He includes cooperative carsharing as a noteworthy example of community-owned transport in practice, drawing on examples from San Francisco, the UK, and Switzerland (Glover, 2016, p. 185). Community-owned transport as a term is strongly linked to cooperatives for commoning mobility and tends to include community initiatives that provide transport services for marginalized groups based on an ethics of care (Ravensbergen and Schwanen, 2023). Taken together, these works demonstrate that cooperatives are seen as valuable means for commoning mobility, which can include a variety of transport modalities with a community committed to social and/or ecological goals. We add to this body of work by outlining more specifically the practices of mobility cooperatives and how these practices establish alternatives and challenge automobility regimes.”
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210422425000784?)
Emil Beemer, Gijs Diercks, et al. :
The mobility regime in the Netherlands relies on commodification, seeing mobility primarily as an economic good to be maximized for societal welfare. The core transformative potential of mobility cooperatives regarding this tenet is to reject growth and develop a shared responsibility among members for fulfilling their mobility needs sustainably and equitably through non-commodified means. Cooperatives in this study succeeded in creating this responsibility, offering practical benefits and a sense of community autonomy while connecting these to a broader vision.
However, this potential faces both internal and external tensions. Internally, cooperatives may be limiting their own potential through members’ pragmatic motivations to join (better parking and lower cost mobility) and deeper beliefs that cultural change is impossible, and that people are unwilling to change their ways. This can lead cooperatives to abandon their broader agenda. Externally, cooperatives face a concept of shared mobility that is dominated by commercial actors. While these use terms of “community” and “sharing” to attract customers, they are ultimately providing a commodified service (Freudendal-Pedersen and Kesselring, 2018). Cooperatives have struggled to portray themselves as transformative shared mobility since they too tend to emphasize practical benefits to attract members. Learning from similar transformative innovations, mobility cooperatives may become more empowered to achieve their larger goals by centering their mission of commoning mobility. French railway cooperative RailCoop is far more explicit about its vision for transforming rail mobility rather than claiming to provide a mobility service, and has attracted over 14,000 members and €8 million in investments (Schramm et al., 2024). By framing themselves as mobility commons, cooperatives can create stronger shared senses of e.g. relatedness, autonomy, and impact, which Avelino et al. (2020) indicate are key for initiatives to be empowered to achieve transformative impacts. This could connect cooperatives to broader networks of actors and initiatives for just mobility transitions, rather than following the current frame of shared mobility.”
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210422425000784?)
Conclusion: Furthering the transformative potential of mobility cooperatives
“This paper contributes a conceptual framework and empirical case study to understand the transformative potential of mobility cooperatives for just mobility transitions. Mobility cooperatives have several elements that prefigure a commoning mobility system and challenge the status quo. Chief among them are shared ownership and responsibility over mobility, a community with new shared values, and sustainable practices of self-organizing. Yet their potential is limited by internal and external factors that keep their unique qualities muddled and block ways to grow their transformative potential. The most promising strategies for navigating these limitations are not necessarily found in scaling up individual initiatives, but in building networks and relations beyond single cooperatives. Examples are strengthening an alternative discourse around principles of commoning, encouraging translocal diffusion with other initiatives, and experimenting with public-common partnerships. These approaches are meaningful for both practitioners and researchers interested in just transitions. Other studies can also address the limitations of our work, for instance by conducting more longitudinal or multi-case research or using action research to feed the analysis back into practice. For such future work, we suggest that transformative potential might be best supported through more collective and interconnected efforts to reimagine and reshape mobility systems.”