Citi­zens’ Assem­bly on the Future of Mobi­li­ty: Ber­li­ners Dis­cuss Sce­na­ri­os for 2045

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From May 23 to 25, 2025, the Mobility2Grid Rese­arch Cam­pus hos­ted a Citi­zens’ Assem­bly (Pla­nungs­zel­le) at the EUREF Cam­pus Ber­lin – a par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry for­mat for demo­cra­tic decis­i­on-making ori­gi­nal­ly deve­lo­ped in the 1970s by Prof. Dr. Peter Die­nel at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wup­per­tal. The Pla­nungs­zel­le method brings tog­e­ther ran­dom­ly sel­ec­ted citi­zens to deli­be­ra­te on com­plex socie­tal issues in a mul­ti-day, struc­tu­red set­ting. Par­ti­ci­pan­ts are pro­vi­ded with expert input, deli­be­ra­te in small groups, and coll­ec­tively pro­du­ce a recommendation.

This Citi­zens’ Assem­bly aimed to enrich and reflect on the mobi­li­ty sce­na­ri­os for 2045 curr­ent­ly under deve­lo­p­ment at the rese­arch cam­pus by inte­gra­ting the lived expe­ri­en­ces and per­spec­ti­ves of Berlin’s residents.

50 ran­dom­ly sel­ec­ted citi­zens from the city regis­try were invi­ted to join two par­al­lel working groups and dis­cuss the future of public mobi­li­ty in their neigh­bor­hoods. Expert pre­sen­ta­ti­ons intro­du­ced key topics and trends:

  • Avai­la­bi­li­ty of Mobi­li­ty (Dr. Kers­tin Wendt, Women in Mobility)
  • Auto­no­mous Dri­ving (Liss Böck­ler, Inter­link GmbH)
  • Micro­mo­bi­li­ty (Sven Hau­sig­ke, STR­AT­MO – Stra­te­gic Mobi­li­ty Planning)
  • Mobi­li­ty-as-a-Ser­vice (MaaS) (Flo­ri­an Dre­scher, inno2grid GmbH)

Par­ti­ci­pan­ts asses­sed various deve­lo­p­ment pathways for urban mobi­li­ty in 2045 – from emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies to ever­y­day rou­ti­nes and infra­struc­tu­re roles – through a col­la­bo­ra­ti­ve and infor­med process.

The results will be sum­ma­ri­zed in a Citi­zens’ Report, to be pre­sen­ted publicly at the Mobility2Grid Sym­po­si­um in autumn 2025 and han­ded over to poli­cy and rese­arch stakeholders.

Addi­tio­nal­ly, the par­ti­ci­pan­ts’ eva­lua­tions and ide­as will be fed into MAT­Sim, an agent-based traf­fic simu­la­ti­on model, to enable data-dri­ven sce­na­rio ana­ly­sis roo­ted in citi­zen input – a glo­bal­ly uni­que approach to par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry mobi­li­ty research.