Governing movements: how mobility activists in the Amelisweerd forest practice transition governance

Present-day mobility systems centered around automobility need transformative change to become just and sustainable. In these processes of societal transitions, citizen-led social movements are often theorized to be valuable actors, yet when it comes to mobility transitions, they have received little attention. We therefore investigate a prominent fifty-year mobilization of community activism against highway construction and expansion in the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands. The social movement to protect Amelisweerd forest is described in a historical narrative drawing on contemporary primary and secondary sources. We analyze the movement through its ability to exercise agencies for transition governance: how a highly localized movement attempts to support systemic change. Identifying destabilization, visioning alternatives, independent spaces, and reflexivity as key mechanisms, we demonstrate how activists have deployed each type of agency as required. The Amelisweerd case indicates that local social movements can build broad coalitions around alternative solutions through strategic adaptability, whose greatest obstacle is ideological entrenchment on the national scale. These transformative social movements and their potential obstructions are worthy of greater consideration in mobility transitions.