Our mainstream mobility thinking is narrowly framed: it highlights the role of mobility in economic and urban growth, individual speed and system efficiency, but obscures its role in reproducing inequalities, and in driving unsustainable developments on a global scale. Critically, however, this narrative obscures our view on the increasingly problematic societal and environmental ‘externalities’ of mobility, such as its significant contribution to climate change, air pollution, social exclusion, deaths and injuries, public health issues and landscape degradation. With such high stakes for our common mobility futures, how can we identify seeds of emerging alternatives, nurture and amplify their potential impact and empower emerging alternative futures?