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For several years, cities have been implementing smart solutions to improve many of their services. Transportation is especially relevant due to its essential role in citizens’ daily lives and its significant environmental impacts. Although other sectors are steadily decreasing emission levels, that is not the case of the transport sector (European Union, 2017).
The premise for this work is that improving the way citizens interact with local authorities will improve both the decisions made by planners in designing better urban and mobility plans, and it will improve citizens’ behavior towards the transportation systems. This will impact the harmful effects of transportation systems on the sustainability of cities.
The link between sustainability and technology is visible in the evolution of the concepts of smart cities and sustainable cities. Some authors currently adopt the term smart sustainable city since it reflects both the technological and the sustainability perspectives (Ahvenniemi et al., 2017). In this context, some technological solutions are naturally linked to the current high levels of digitalization, and terms such as digital city and information city were common before the universal adoption of the term smart city (De Jong et al., 2015). Considering that cities are dynamic complex systems, other authors also apply a service-dominant (S-D) logic to the study of urban systems. This leads to an evolution of the smart city concept to smart cities as a service system (SCSS) (D’aniello et al., 2020; Polese et al., 2019).
The increasing level of digitalization and usage of information and communication technologies (ICT), along with a rising awareness of the climate changes, have been changing the way people use transports, also impacting urban mobility solutions and business models. This period of organizational and institutional changes, implemented alongside technological developments, is considered not only a socio-demographic transition but a socio-technical transition (Spickermann et al., 2014). Following the same trend of technological-based businesses, the service design science has strongly embraced information technologies, allowing for new services to adapt to the digital world (Grenha Teixeira et al., 2017; Lusch & Nambisan, 2015; Patrício et al., 2011). This is accomplished by designing multi-channel services, including digital channels (Patrício et al., 2008).
In a service exchange, value is co-created through physical or virtual interactions between networks of suppliers and customers (Frow et al., 2014; Patrício et al., 2018). According to the service-dominant (S-D) logic, value is co-created with customers, as they assume an active, connected and informed role in the value creation process (Vargo & Lusch, 2008).
Considering the three elements of the framework presented by Lusch & Nambisan (2015) – service ecosystems, service platforms, and value co-creation – this work adopts an S-D logic to design an integrated approach to urban and mobility challenges. This perspective is justified as it is assumed that citizens’ well-being must be central in planning activities. Therefore, citizens should be involved in the design of new solutions by sharing information and ideas. In line with the idea of a smart city service system, this paper presents research in mobility services, going beyond the traditional one-to-one interaction of local authorities and citizens, including interactions between citizens with different profiles. From the citizens’ perspective, these interactions can simplify the process of obtaining information. From the point of view of service providers, these interactions can improve their service level, as more customers are fulfilling their needs. Such an approach also contributes to research in the area of service design, since it considers that customers can create value not only with the service provider but with other customers, becoming, therefore, service providers themselves.