My secondment began with a question

by Gozde Yildiz, University of Siena - secondment to the City of Lappeenranta

Question: Electric mobility is growing in Lappeenranta, but will winter conditions, charging patterns and housing rules slow or skew the transition?

I arrived knowing the city’s ambition, carbon‑neutral by 2030, part of the EU’s 100 Climate‑Neutral and Smart Cities mission, but also that targets are met on streets, in parking lots and inside housing‑company boardrooms.

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I wanted to see what “mobility infrastructure” looks like when it is lived every day: how people commute by e‑car, e‑bike or e‑scooter when darkness falls early, snow piles up and cold seeps into batteries and bones; where they actually plug in; and who decides, pays and might be left out in apartment blocks.

The core I3X challenge is to understand what practical decarbonisation of everyday urban mobility looks like on the ground. Lappeenranta is a green Mission City, yet transport remains a hard‑to‑abate emissions source. Electric mobility is a key lever, but uptake and equitable access depend on more than technology. Three bottlenecks shape my research:

• winter‑specific user practices (darkness, snow, cold, safety) that influence mode choice, routes and neighbourhood preferences;

• charging practices vs. energy system design (tariffs, smart charging) that can raise costs or strain grids; and

• housing governance and equity, where technical, regulatory and financial barriers slow home charger installation in multi‑unit housing.

Over one month, I conducted qualitative fieldwork on “E‑mobility and home‑to‑work commuting in Lappeenranta: user practices, charging infrastructure, and urban mobility networks.” I interviewed: e‑car users (private and shared), e‑bike users, e‑scooter users, non‑users of e‑modes, and charger-side actors (installation companies and residents with home chargers). Using a 30-45 minute semi‑structured guide, I explored everyday commuting patterns, winter adaptation, charging routines, housing‑company decision‑making and perceptions of safety, darkness and cold. Alongside interviews, I held informal discussions with municipal staff to contextualise findings within local policy frameworks. In the final week, I delivered a seminar to share preliminary insights and my research interests with the host team.

What emerged was a set of lived infrastructures: routines, negotiations, workarounds, and hopes through which residents strive to make electric commuting work across seasons. My secondment generated a corpus of audio-recorded interviews, field notes on charging practices and winter mobility, and preliminary thematic codes capturing barriers and potentials.

The work feeds into SMAR3TS WPs:

1. WP3 (Mobility): evidence on how people actually move;

2. WP4 (Energy): insights on where, when and how residents charge, and how tariffs, smart charging, PV or storage shape these practices;

3. WP5 (Housing): understanding of technical, regulatory and equity bottlenecks for home chargers in multi‑unit housing. For the City of Lappeenranta, the secondment could deliver a small public forum on e-mobility, seasonal evidence to inform sustainable urban mobility planning, and insights to support fair access to home charging.  Next steps include coding transcripts and producing comparative insights for Lappeenranta’s actions, SMAR3TS deliverables, and a forthcoming paper on e‑mobility and home‑to‑work commuting in Finland and Italy.