6. Conclusions

Analyzing strategic documents through an in-depth methodology framework has enabled this thesis to address the dynamic urban complexities that manifest within the challenges of mobility planning processes. In addition, this research has highlighted the importance of strategic planning documents as an essential and powerful tool in the urban planning context which gathers decision-making elements to guide but should not limit human behaviors fostering paradigms shift if well planned and adopted. Therefore, to answer the research question, Vienna, Brussels, Budapest, Rome, and Lisbon, have been selected as case studies to have their mobility plans scrutinized based on the SUMP guidelines to unfold to what extent they could be considered SUMPs.

Further, exploring the SUMP 12 Steps through the 32 SUMP Activities and its Principles throughout the case studies has allowed the identification of strengths, weaknesses, and challenges associated with the mobility planning processes. As a result, the research findings have further supported the discussion behind the paradigm shift from TTP toward SUMPing that although it started at the end of the 20

th

century, this thesis has revealed that it is still happening nowadays toward its future consolidation. Thus, the importance of an integrated approach, by all means, has been reinstated throughout this entire work to foster sustainable urban development and unfolded the necessity to consider planning and practices into mobility paradigm transitions. As a result, all thesis research goals have been fulfilled, and the research question has been answered.

Nevertheless, the author would like to uncover a final critical and very needed point as an additional brief contribution to the findings of this thesis. In general, to a certain extent, sustainable advances in planning and some practices have been implemented by EU capital cities, which for sure deserves some celebrations. However, as tackled in the literature review, the widely fostered by the EU in the past years, which undoubtedly has been achieving considerable progress in mobility planning and practices never accomplished before is not enough to fully solve current and future mobility challenges to all their extents. Whereas it does not address important topics that, in one way or another, impact and is also affected by mobility forms and patterns, such as but

not limited to, socio-spatial inequalities, political disparities, and diversity issues for instance, gender, ethnicity, race, disabilities, age, classes.

Thus, based on the in-depth case studies analyses, apart from Vienna, which has addressed the managing to handle some diversity issues, all other case studies did not cover those vital topics mentioned at the end of the last paragraph. Therefore, to genuinely solve all the current and future mobility challenges reinstated throughout this thesis, the integrated approach needs to go beyond the sustainability aspects and consider the interrelationship between mobility and all possible fields in which it is inserted, interacts, and impacts.

6.1. Limitations & Recommendations

Therefore, this thesis development has some limitations; for instance, the SUMP SAT is a great tool to assess strategic documents; however, it has some constraints. Some never, sometimes, about half the time, most of the time, always are too empiric on a topic that could be more metric and give more precise results. Thus, improvements can be made by widening the analytical framework, for instance, addressing existing indicators or developing new ones to better handle the massive qualitative data behind all these documents, in addition to tackling more in-depth these critical topics that have not been much reached into the strategic documents and mobility practices so far. Other improvements could be selecting different city packages, like 2

nd

tier cities that are also relevant in the EU scenario but have not been evaluated by this research. Hence, potential future works are expected to expand these analyses and contribute toward a better mobility paradigm beyond sustainability.