The movie "Jurassic Park" (1993), which featured dinosaurs created for commercial purposes, ended a 29-year-long series with "Jurassic World: Dominion" (2022), which delved into the contemplation of a world where humans and dinosaurs coexist, moving beyond the theme park.

Dinosaurs, the product of technological innovation within this successful franchise, initially presented a sense of wonder and discovery to the existing world and its inhabitants. However, the depiction of the conflict between this unfamiliar presence and the world it created presented a realistic and relatable contemplation.

In particular, the presence of dinosaurs permeating the cityscape, including the T-Rex roaring at a lion in a zoo, the Pterodactyl nesting on the rooftop of a Manhattan skyscraper, and the Triceratops charging and tossing vehicles, confirms their indifference to the implicit order, both large and small, of the world we take for granted.

Velociraptor, Electric Kickboards, Leaping into the City

Electric kickboards, which have become a common sight on the streets over the past four years, are like the velociraptors, the fastest and most impressive creatures in the Jurassic Park series. They pose a threat to pedestrians, while drivers experience them as a distinct yet undeniable presence. These new modes of transportation, which rapidly permeated the world as of 2018, have boldly striven to conquer various cities by promising mobility that is simpler, more personal, accessible everywhere, and fundamentally different from existing modes of transportation.

However, truth always means the two sides of an unstable form.

Citizens and local governments have gradually become aware of the threat to pedestrians' safety on sidewalks, the increased anxiety among vehicle drivers, and the chaos caused by electric kickboards left unattended throughout public streets, turning them into tech trash weighing over 30kg. However, since the valuation of related companies has not significantly changed, these mobility innovation companies have been busy searching for clues of profitability in every city possible.

But if these mobility innovation companies truly offer a new and necessary future for users' movement, why is the city hostile toward them? Why did Lime, the world's leading electric kickboard sharing company, along with Germany's Wind and Singapore's Neuron Mobility, leave the Korean market? Can we truly attribute it solely to the continuous revision of road traffic laws and the different specific policies of each local government, as the industry claims?

The Industry's Perspective on Destroying Cities, Tabula Rasa

"Have you lived in Seoul for a long time?"
"Yes, I lived in Jamsil until high school, so most of my close friends are from that neighborhood, and after that..."

People describe cities as a sense of home. Memories and emotions evoked by familiar streets and store locations persist even when time passes and buildings disappear. They still serve as explanations for many aspects of our lives. Also, roads were originally intended for people's diverse activities. In the early 1900s, the streets of New York were densely packed with people traveling by horse, bicycle, and on foot, along with outdoor cafes and street vendors catering to them.

Following the emergence of Ford's mass-produced automobiles, they began to occupy the space for people's free activities on the streets. This chaos gradually led to roads being recognized as public assets, becoming the target of government-led reform projects. It is essential to remember that the modernization of roads and transportation systems is the result of contractual relationships built up over time based on the different trajectories of people's lives in cities.

However, companies advocating for mobility innovation have focused on experimenting, upgrading, and optimizing services related to mobility without understanding the people and the culture surrounding their urban journeys. They have adhered to a destructive approach of tabula rasa, a blank canvas, by quickly checking and revising.

Cities are not Hardware Seeking Better Software.

On the contrary, cities are more akin to complex and living organisms. They are social units burdened by legal, political, and cultural contracts between users, i.e., city dwellers, the government, and corporations. Sadly, over the past four years, mobility innovation companies have been so engrossed in their goal of conquering all cities that they have forgotten to care about what it means for people to move through their familiar cities.

Furthermore, they have forgotten about their vigilance against collectivist conflicts operating between governments and citizens, focusing on individual users' impulses and payments through smartphones. That's right, the people you are trying to persuade are beginning to notice the damage they are unwittingly creating on the streets.

Warning signs have been appearing for years, but mobility innovation companies have been using most of their organizational resources to dominate cities, driven by new legal restrictions and near-unlimited business licenses that intensify competition within the industry. This has resulted in either jeopardizing their own brands or disappointing investors in the process.

A Single Context for Viewing City Journeys

In the past, property managers of companies that were suddenly required to respond to the government's sudden standards regarding renewable energy struggled to understand what and why they needed to do. Policymakers facing the topic of mobility innovation may be in a similar situation. It's easy to see that this technological shift has outpaced the speed of social consensus worldwide, including in the UK, Germany, and France, and no government seems to have found a complete answer to this, even after the pandemic.

So, how can we help policymakers in Korea who are experiencing this confusion, and the key actors who ultimately need to be convinced, i.e., cities and their citizens, understand the industry's vision?

The traffic congestion on Olympic Boulevard during rush hour represents a variety of expectations and goals for people's different urban journeys. Public transportation takes responsibility for the efficient movement of many city dwellers, but it cannot fulfill the needs of personal vehicles that move according to individual needs.

The congestion created by many personal vehicles reveals the limitations of national productivity decline and energy inefficiency. Individualized solutions such as electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles play their roles, but it is important to remember that they are not complete solutions to help a single person achieve an optimal urban journey.

Consider a couple who purchased a new carpet and are moving it directly into their newly occupied apartment. The physical difficulty of navigating the crowded station when using the subway, the glances from others. Or, even if you choose a personal vehicle, how would you carry it if it's not a large SUV? Even if you hire a truck to move it, how would you move it to the apartment's elevator?

Despite the passage of time, the modes of transportation that have filled cities have left countless unsolved problems for humans. Considering and understanding these problems within a single context can be an opportunity for mobility innovation companies.

Starting with Innovation Based on the Presentation of Related Culture

Steelcase, the world's leading office furniture company and a major investor in IDEO, the company that led the globalization of design thinking, revolutionized the open office industry and then manufactured and sold all the products to support that culture.

Steelcase's CEO, who has observed and identified patterns in the daily lives of actual users of office furniture and utilized this to concretize new categories as strategies, speaks of the company's differentiation as Critical thinking. This is an example that proves the justification for an approach that seeks to understand the world by critically examining and approaching what assumptions are inherent in the industry and whether they can be accepted in a changed society.

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