Amid growing calls for sustainable, efficient urban mobility, the region of Paris serves as a case study for the territorial reconfiguration of mobility governance through the lens of digitalisation. Kei Tanikawa Obregón’s research explores how the integration of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) platforms transforms not only the technical coordination of transport systems but also the political anatomy of urban decision-making. By embedding transport logic within digital infrastructure, the state and market actors recalibrate the delegation of public services, redefining the roles of public authorities, private operators, and users alike. The paper argues that digitisation is not a neutral tool but a strategic vector for the consolidation of power, shaping how mobility is administered, who controls it, and which forms of mobility are prioritised. Concepts like interoperability, platform governance, and real-time data flow become central, yet they also raise crucial questions around equity, surveillance, and democratic oversight. While digital solutions offer promise for multimodal integration and emissions reduction, they often sideline concerns over accessibility, institutional transparency, and local adaptability. Thus, the Parisian model exemplifies the global trend of treating urban transport as a techno-political experiment, where smartness is often conflated with progress, obscuring the deeper socio-political dynamics at play. Obregón’s work ultimately calls for a more reflexive urban governance model that recognises the non-neutrality of digital mediation and places democratic accountability at the core of mobility innovation.
Tanikawa Obregón, Kei (2022). La digitalización al centro de las reestructuraciones territoriales de los mercados de movilidad: el caso de la región Parisina. URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 12(2), 95–101.
