NEW VOICES

Accounting for Housing and Transportation Cost when private professionals are searching for a domestic property

Maria Besselièvre

31/05/2022

Residential choice has been well analyzed. But less is known about the role played by private real estate professionals – who are the main contact for households looking to buy property – and even less about their consideration of Housing and Transportation Cost, i.e. the expenses in terms of housing and daily mobility borne by households once in their new home. Maria Besselièvre approached this subject by meeting households and professionals from Grésivaudan, an attractive valley linking Grenoble and Chambéry. This work received the 2021 New Voices Award from the Mobile Lives Forum.

NEW VOICES

Unfixing the City: Rickshaw Mobilities, Modernities and Urban Change in Dhaka

Annemiek Prins

25/05/2022

It is almost impossible to imagine the streets of Dhaka without the colourful shape of the cycle-rickshaw. Or without the hundreds of thousands of drivers who operate the rickshaw across the dense and congested streets of Bangladesh’s capital city. Despite this overwhelming presence, the vehicle is strikingly absent from plans, policies, and visions for the urban future of Dhaka. This thesis tries to make sense of this discrepancy and examines how the mobilities and employment projects of cycle-rickshaw drivers unfold amidst efforts to ban and restrict the presence of the rickshaw in Dhaka. This work received the 2021 New Voices Award from the Mobile Lives Forum.

SOUTHERN DIARIES

Inequalities in the geographic access to COVID-19 healthcare

Rafael Pereira

16/05/2022

Rafael Pereira sheds new light on the issues of inequalities in access to health services in Brazilian hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic. By cross-referencing the quality of their transport accessibility with the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the neighborhoods they serve, he suggests new directions for public policies — a methodology that European countries could learn from.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies, Theories

RESEARCH NOTES

An emblematic model of a car-free day: Bogota’s Ciclovía

Mobile Lives Forum

16/05/2022

Every Sunday for almost 50 years, the City of Bogotá has closed off a continuous network of streets and avenues, banning motorized vehicles so that residents can safely go for a walk or ride a bicycle safely. What began as an activist and community initiative progressively became institutionalized and is now a core measure in the city's public policy with regards to leisure and improving the quality of life. A source of inspiration for the world's largest cities today, how did this event of unprecedented magnitude develop?

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

OPINIONS

A new post-pandemic pathway for mobility?

Greg Marsden, Jillian Anable, Llinos Brown, Iain Docherty

02/05/2022

Starting in early 2020, the pandemic has had a major impact on how we all live our lives. We have been tracking the changes in behaviour in the UK for those two years. Our findings are both modest but also extraordinary in many respects. Modest, in that it is only some behaviours in some parts of the economy which have really changed. Extraordinary, in that the findings challenge aspects of the foundations which have governed how we think about and plan for mobility.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

CROSSED PERSPECTIVES

Does free transport work?

Philippe Duron, Arnaud Passalacqua

13/04/2022

The idea of making public transport free is gaining ground. By the end of 2021, 36 towns and cities in France had adopted it. Its supporters defend its benefits in terms of equality and modal shift, while its detractors criticise the cost and question the benefits. But what do the results of the experiment tell us? What are the problems that emerge, and what are the solutions? Arnaud Passalacqua, member of the French Observatory of free transport, and Philippe Duron, president of TDIE, debate on the use of free transport as a response to contemporary mobility challenges.

Thematics : Policies

CONTROVERSIES

The “15-minute city”: the way forward or an ideological mirage?

Carlos Moreno, Pierre Veltz

11/04/2022

Everyone having everything within fifteen minutes of their home: this is the promise of the fifteen-minute city. The idea of a city that is peaceful because of the proximity it allows and ecological because of the reduction in travel that it entails has gained ground, and it is now part of media debates and political programmes. But are its promises really feasible? Is it fair? Is it even desirable? Carlos Moreno, the father of the fifteen-minute city, and Pierre Veltz, who questions its virtues, respond to these questions.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies, Theories

OPINIONS

Demobility. Back to the roots

Bruno Marzloff

23/03/2022

Bruno Marzloff can be credited with a certain constancy in his determination to promote demobility and its promises. He is the author of the Demobility page in the GART's Dictionary of Mobility published in November 2021. The exercise is contrary to the values of a progress that endures. The word is often inaudible, even shocking for many. It persists, no doubt for very good reasons. This is also why we wanted to give him the floor.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies, Theories

RESEARCH NOTES

Time, leisure and mobility

Benjamin Pradel

23/03/2022

This report aims to contribute to the Mobile Lives Forum’s research on mobility and rhythms of life from the standpoint of leisure and to open new research avenues. This report, which combines elements of a summary, an analysis, and some surprising discoveries, questions the concept of leisure as a social activity in its relationship to time and travel. Of general scope, it probes a part of the literature that mixes the sociology of time, leisure, and mobility. It combines existing concepts and attempts an exploratory study on the importance of mastering one’s time, especially leisure time and free time, in the construction of well-being, through the idea of "rhythmic capability" and …

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies, Theories

NEW VOICES

Sexual harassment in the metro: the experience of violence on the move

Sian Lewis

09/03/2022

This article focuses on research that explored experiences of and the policing of sexual harassment on the London Underground. It highlights that the research took a qualitative approach in the form of interviews with victims and the police. Using a novel conceptual framework built around the concepts of space, mobilities and rhythm, temporalities and knowledges, this research opens up a new perspective at the intersections of feminist research on gendered violence and a mobilities perspective. This thesis as a whole makes an important contribution to our understanding of a particular form of gendered violence happening within the transitory space of an underground in a major Western…

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

RESEARCH NOTES

The Flone Initiative tackles sexual harassment and violence against women in Nairobi

Mobile Lives Forum

09/03/2022

In Nairobi, Kenya, an association is mobilising to tackle sexual harassment against women in matatus, the thousands of informal minibuses that provide public transport in the city. Their goal : to integrate the issue of gender inequality into transport policies and the training of professionals in the sector, in order to remove obstacles to mobility and the emancipation of women. How successful has it been?

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

NEW VOICES

Emotions, entrepreneurship and globalisation: the petit capitalism of migrant women between China and Taiwan

Beatrice Zani

08/03/2022

On the backroads, hidden inside a suitcase, invisible to border controls, a fluorescent orange bra made in a textile factory in Southern China crosses the Strait and arrives in Taiwan. There, it wanders and circulates, on physical and digital platforms, and then returns to its place of production in China. Studying the mobility of this particular object allows us to interrogate the social and emotional journeys of its producers: young female workers from rural Chinese regions who first migrate to towns within China for work, and then marry in order to travel to Taiwan for work later.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Theories