The new sustainable mobility is not only a technological challenge but also a cultural one. And it has a lot to do with the way we design and inhabit our cities

There is an English word that comes from Italy and expresses the sense of mobility in the near future. It's Movability: Jeffrey Schnapp, designer and humanist, head of the Harvard Meta Lab and chief visionary officer of Piaggio Fast Forward, says he found this term in the Piaggio archives: "It dates back to the time when the culture of light mobility that had begun was being rethought then with the Vespa. Movability can be the cipher of our new way of moving in the cities of the 21st century, when the most widespread dimension will be on the one hand micro-mobility, and therefore walking, or moving at very high speed ".

Mobility, according to Schnapp, is not a sphere in which technical solutions can live on their own, “because it touches the deepest values ​​of our society and the sense of community. This is why Movability is a sort of vision of an ideal society that we want to build, a dimension that represents a great space for innovation ”.

In this vision, there is no physical mobility without social mobility, as explained by Federico Bomba, president of Sineglossa, the Bolognese association that coordinates the AI4FUTURE project, an international network established with the Meet in Milan, Espronceda in Barcelona, ​​V2 in Rotterdam and Sardegna Theater in Cagliari. "AI4FUTURE is a pilot project in which artists who work with artificial intelligence are called to collaborate with young activists, public administrations, research centers, companies and the world of non-profit as in a Renaissance court, to create installations that know how to communicate with the inhabitants through data and that make the advocacy work that many young people across Europe are carrying out, despite the adverse situations, more immediate with respect to some fundamental global challenges ”.

Mobility was precisely the theme chosen this year for AI4FUTURE, starting from none other than Leonardo, according to whom 'Motion is the cause of all life': "We have learned it well in this last year, in which the movements have been strongly limited and the virtual has become for many the real space of movement, meeting, relationship. We are used to thinking about mobility in terms of physical transport, whether it is the movements to go to work every day or those that push migrants on rubber boats in search of a better life. There has been much talk and continues to talk about sustainability, innovative technologies linked to mobility and ecological transition. We understand, therefore, that it is no longer just a matter of asking engineers and economists to show us the way forward for progress that has been giving serious symptoms of failure for years, but for some it seemed unstoppable, rather than involving a larger group of stakeholders to radically

In the words of Schnapp, “we have a tendency to think that mobility is a technical, practical or functional matter. In reality, mobility is the design of our cities, it is everything that conditions and marks the character of the culture to which we belong, so a change of this type is a fundamental change in the way in which people interact with their cities and cities. with their neighborhoods. In this world of hyper-connectivity that characterizes the present there are counter-trends that strengthen our relationship with what surrounds us in a more immediate way, and the growth of micro-mobility is part of this transformation that is underway. We are approaching a phase in which the car becomes just an element in a kind of mobility ecology where it will no longer be the protagonist ".