The City Lab Joinville in southern Brazil

The city of Joinville in the south of Brazil is known for its future-oriented policies and efforts towards becoming a smart city. In this context, a so-called "Mobility City Lab" was implemented in a joint effort between the local administration, the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für International Zusammenarbeit), the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO) and the University of Stuttgart. The City Lab Methodology has been developed in 2012 by the innovation network "Morgenstadt / City of the Future", which is a collaboration platform led by the Fraunhofer Society where research, industry and cities come together to design and implement solutions for the city of the future. The City Lab approach is a holistic analytical framework that helps to create individual sustainability strategies for cities that build on digital innovations, clean technologies and a broad stakeholder dialogue. The goal in Joinville was to help this city to become a model in Brazil for innovative mobility concepts and create a precedent in Latin America on how intelligent growth and sustainable urban development can be initiated in an emerging economy. The methodology applied is comprised of four main steps (preparation, desktop research and analysis, onsite assessment, and results). The analysis of strategic documents and expert interviews with local actors allowed for the assessment of the local mobility system. This was completed by the analysis of indicators and action fields, which indicated an immediate need for improving the public transport, highlighted the lack of intermodality, a strong private car culture and a general discontent of users with the public transport services offered. 25 project ideas, tailored to Joinville´s unique needs and opportunities, were developed in the process and results compiled in a roadmap as a guideline for transforming the mobility in the city. The proposed projects are combined with the already ongoing and planned activities in Joinville and aim to further strengthen its position within Brazil and make it a lighthouse city within Latin America. This paper will describe the research phases and the relevant results of the analysis. It aims to give an insight on the process implementation in the municipality and how the co-creation process is carried out and a key to the successful implementation of the project. Finally, it will reveal some of the activities that have been initiated after the city lab and the impact that it has had on the transformation of Joinville and its citizens.