From commodity to commons: Understanding the transformative potential of mobility cooperatives for just sustainability transitions

• Market-state approaches to mobility transitions fail to address persistent problems • Mobility commons can fundamentally challenge regimes, e.g. through cooperatives • We investigate how communities organize shared mobility commons in cooperatives • Mobility cooperatives offer shared ownership, community spirit, and peer governance • We identify multiple strategies to further expand their transformative potential Dominant approaches to mobility transitions appear unable to address persistent problems of unsustainability and injustice. However, where regime actors fail, we expect to see alternative movements developing. This paper investigates the transformative potential of one such alternative – Dutch mobility cooperatives. We draw on transitions and commons literature to understand the role of mobility cooperatives in challenging the Dutch mobility regime and contributing to just sustainability transitions. Based on a single embedded case study design of the Dutch mobility cooperative movement, our results indicate that cooperatives succeed in prefiguring an alternative system based on collective ownership, community spirit, and self-governance. However, they remain entangled with regime characteristics of commodification, an individualist car culture, and market-state governance. We contribute a conceptual framework contrasting mobility commons with the incumbent regime, a deeper understanding of mobility cooperatives and their transformative potential for just mobility transitions, and strategies to further develop this potential.