The luxury of choice: Understanding the Brussels mobility conflict through socio-economic positions, value orientations and mobility behaviour

Urban sustainable mobility transitions are facing opposition, which undermines their odds of succeeding. Within a context of environmental distress, this poses an extra challenge to both policy makers and academics involved with sustainable mobility. Contemporary insights attribute these conflicts to rational self-interest or structural socio-economic factors. Approaching the issue from a political sociology perspective, our contribution introduces an additional motive for conflict: personal value orientations. The allocation of urban space can serve different purposes, such as car-centred accessibility or multimodal liveability, and is likely to be judged differently depending on one’s values. Our aim is to empirically verify which elements predict positioning within the conflict; and to what extent value orientations contribute. To this end, we elaborate on the controversy surrounding the Good Move-mobility plan in the Brussels municipality of Schaerbeek. Data were collected by a random walk-inspired method of door-to-door surveying (N = 178). Our findings paint a nuanced picture: Bicycle use is the strongest predictor for positioning within the mobility debate, while other modes don’t amount to such a clear impact. Socio-economic and value-based indicators proof to be relevant as well. Moreover, the distinct demographic profile of urban cyclists underlines the interconnectedness between these variables.