Figure 4. The 12 Steps of Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning

integrate the existing plans and identify the needs of the different actors and stakeholders. Moreover, citizens must participate and expose their mobility and accessibility needs. Further, the plan achievement depends on the implementation of actions that must be based on scenarios, cost assessments, and definitions of funding resources, which indicators will further monitor, despite also depending on how the plan management is being carried out. Hence, the plan s proposals must balance and integrate the different transport modes and cooperate between different government levels. The actions must be monitored and revised if necessary, and the results must be communicated to society. Thus, the local authorities are responsible for establishing mechanisms to assure the quality and efficacy of the SUMP within the sphere of sustainability (Duportail & Meerschaert, 2013; European Commission, 2013c; Rupprecht Consult, 2019).

Figure 4. The 12 Steps of Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning. Source: Rupprecht Consult (2019) In a nutshell, the elaboration of a SUMP foresees a strategic plan designed to achieve consistent results, with goals and a mission statement defined together with the citizens and stakeholders (participation) to achieve a future scenario (vision) in a specific time (term), monitored by indicators.

As can be seen, if well designed, strategic planning documents could be a powerful tool to foster a shift in urban mobility paradigms. For this to happen, urban mobility policies should evolve, adjusting their common goals towards a more holistic approach envisioning long-term actions to guarantee current and future displacements of goods and people, despite also assuring a better quality of urban life. Thus, the SUMP could be an outstanding planning strategy to achieve all principles if the cities particularities and specificities are considered.

3. Research Design and Methods

The previous chapter has given a primary perspective of the importance of developing SUMPs as an opportunity to enhance sustainable urban development (SUD). Although the SUMP concept is relatively recent, cities worldwide have started applying it to their strategic documents. Thus, this research is a qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory study that has opted for multiple cases to meet its objectives.

Notwithstanding, the EU is pushing toward a unified vision of its state members. However, each country has its particularities, specificities, and national norms. Hence, this research has focused on the EU capitals to uncover a European perspective regarding their SUMPs development, implementation, and monitoring process and discover their challenges and solutions. For this reason, this section starts by presenting an overview of the 27 EU cities as case studies (Vienna, Brussels, Budapest, Rome, and Lisbon) has been presented more in-depth to contextualize and describe their current scenarios. Afterward, the methods explored in the document analysis have been shown to shape the scope of this investigation.

3.1. European Capitals as Case Studies

Nowadays, the EU is comprised of a supranational union of twenty-seven associated countries under the same integrationist motivations and its own political regime, with national economies that, together, add almost half a billion inhabitants (European Union, 2022). Moreover, the EU covers over 4 million km² and forms the most significant economic bloc globally (European Commission, 2022). In addition, European cities, in general, have been considered great sustainable urban mobility examples worldwide. For this reason, the author has decided to first focus the analysis on EU Capitals to have a broad outlook (Table 3). Further, five case cities have been selected to have their documents challenges to meet the goals of this thesis. Moreover, it is essential to mention that the decision to limit the research on EU capitals is not exhaustive of possible significant cases.