‘Citizen Expertise’ in Sustainable Urban Mobility: From Inclusion to Co-Creation

Contemporary concerns with ‘lay expertise’ tend to revolve around the problematics of inclusion and input legitimacy in policy making. Much effort is invested in theoretical and practical debates on the appropriate design of respective ‘invited spaces’ which offer arenas for involvement of citizen experts. Against this background, the present paper explores an alternative mode of emerging engagement, in which concerned citizens take the initiative and claim for themselves an active role and create a space to include or involve themselves and their expertise and thus contribute to co-creation of solutions to policy problems. A paradigmatic case followed in this explorative analysis comes from the recent developments in the field of urban mobility in Berlin. From 2016 to 2018, activists managed to challenge the established process for mobility policy creation, asserting citizen knowledge production and integration into policy. This ultimately led to an unprecedented process of co-creative legislation that emphasized subjective safety, with Berlin becoming the first German state to pass a bicycle law in June of 2018. Taking a closer look at the spectrum of ‘lay expertise’ relevant in this case, the paper discusses the broader importance of the interplay of content- and process-oriented expertise of citizens for their impact on policymaking and the possible output legitimacy of their involvement.