Governing Spanish “municipalities of change” through mobilities

Measures to encourage walking, cycling and the use of public transport rather than the car both exemplify and reveal the change in local policy in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia since 2015. The article explores the resources employed by politicians to re-politicise mobility by removing it from the purely technical sphere of transport management. This field of action is constructed around politicians whose positions and media strategies vary substantially. Without denying the limitations (fetishisation of the bicycle and focus on a handful of flagship urban operations), the article describes the discontinuities but also the continuities with the programmes of previous municipalities. It also highlights how mobility planning, through the reorganisation of public space, expresses the intentions and expectations associated with political change (behaviour modification, respect, public spirit). This new form of governance through infrastructure also leads to a profound reshaping of local relations between public and private actors, community movements working for new mobilities, and interest groups that remain largely wedded to the automobile.