Planning for resourcefulness: exploring new frontiers for participatory transport planning theory and practice in Rio de Janeiro and L'Aquila

Contemporary urban environments are being affected by a serious mobility crisis. This crisis is intertwined with broader environmental and social crises that are assuming critical magnitude. The concepts of sustainability and resilience have been informing transport planning theory and practice, providing initial instruments to challenge those crises. However, they have not yet enabled the change required. This thesis aims to explore new frontiers for transport planning, critically approaching the idea of resourcefulness. Resourcefulness is a property and a worldview that, with a specific focus on participatory practices, aims to inform the way we approach the crises, nature, and change, towards ecological solutions. Having developed this worldview, building on the literature that aims at complementing sustainability and resilience, this thesis explores how its theoretical and practical elements can improve the ability of transport planning to address the current mobility crisis. It does so by critically analysing the practices and vision of two resourcefulness-aligned actors working towards improving transport planning processes in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and L’Aquila. From those experiences it draws out an agenda for a resourcefulness-based transport planning that, via knowledge-based and ethically-grounded participation, can guide the construction of ecological and just mobilities.