Mission
Mobility planning in cities is often seen as a neutral, technical discipline – managing flows of people and goods. This approach ignores:
The profoundly social nature of mobility
Relationships and interdependency are fundamental to how people plan, experience and give meaning to mobility. For example, urban planning discourse often emphasizes commutes and ignores mobilities related to care for oneself and for others, neglecting the complexity of people’s lives and their needs as social, interdependent creatures.
Social difference
Policies related to mobility and public space have different effects on people’s daily lives depending on their gender, age, income, ethical and racial background, their bodily needs, disability, and so forth. Spaces that look accessible to some, are inaccessible to many others.
Plural meanings and experiences of (im)mobility
Mobility is much more than moving from A to B. Connecting with others or enjoying solitude, playing or learning, taking care of someone, being cared for – our lifes unfold on the move. This complexity is not always accounted for in planning, many voices are not heard.
Commoning mobility platform
The notions of ‘commoning mobility’ or ‘mobility as commons’ have been used by scholars and practitioners to envision and materialise fairer, more sustainable mobilities.*
In my work with others, I primarily use the notion ‘commoning mobility’ as to criticise individualistic, technocractic ways of looking at mobility, especially in the context of transitions to sustainable mobility. More recently, I started to explore gender-insensitivity of mobility planning and, in particular, its relationship with knowledge.
How do planners create knowledge about mobilities? Whose voices are heard? What experiences, meanings and needs might be (paradoxically) made invisible through knowledge production? How can mobility knowledge and, hence, mobilities, be commoned?
Driven by these questions, this platform is dedicated to ‘commoning mobility knowledge’. Focusing primarily on sharing research findings and reflections on mobility and public space, it aspires to offer a space where you can encounter a plurality of experiences and meanings of mobilities.
For example, for over a decade Walter Dresscher and Indranil Bhattacharya (Townmaking) have been working on developing and applying the notion of mobility as a commons (MaaC) in the Netherlands, focusing on community-owned shared mobility solutions.
Importantly, since her seminal book Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes (2018) American Sociologist Mimi Sheller has been working on the notion of ‘mobile commoning’ defined in her recent paper ‘as socially produced rules for sharing and moving together with others’ (2022; p.33) in the context of mobility (in)justice, climate change and migration.
In the past decade more scholars and practitioners have applied the notions of commons and commoning to mobility, accessibility and transportation. Understanding of commoning mobility, underpinning this platform, is based on earlier collaborative work on low-carbon mobility transitions and commoning mobility knowledge in the context of gender-sensitive mobility planning.