Medium Viable Cities - online resource

This article aims to contribute to the discussion about the future of sustainable mobility in Nordic winter cities. We share outcomes of an exploratory study of expert-based imaginaries and contrast them with context-driven imaginaries we found in Skellefteå, a quickly growing municipality in the north of Sweden. Such imaginaries reflect collectively held visions and expectations about the future, blending technological, social, cultural and economic dimensions. They are not individual perceptions of the future but rather are those shared collectively. On the way to sustainable and just mobility systems, it is important to identify and highlight diverse imaginaries coming from a variety of places and from different actor groups, especially those that are still overlooked and underrepresented in the mainstream debate. In this article, we draw attention to two context-driven imaginaries and show how they differ from those held by transport and mobility experts. By paying attention to diverse imaginaries, the current debate about future mobility systems can become more vibrant and inclusive. And, eventually, lead to the discovery of context-sensitive solutions for future mobility systems in the Northern regions and pathways towards them.