Royal Geographical Society – IBG Call for Papers

New paradigms in conceptualizing shared mobility – Call for papers

We invite submissions to the following Call for Papers for the 2013 RGS-IBG (Royal Geographical Society – Institute of British Geographers) annual conference. This will take place in London from Wednesday 28 to Friday 30 August 2013. Please note the opportunity for a postgraduate paper prize.

Personal Rapid Transit – John Hersey for the Boston Globe

New paradigms in conceptualizing shared mobility

Session Convenors: Dr Juliet Jain & Professor Graham Parkhurst, University of the West of England, Bristol

Technology is offering a potential new dynamic in how transport is delivered and used. There is a move from what were once ‘private’ ways of being mobile towards ‘shared’ modes. Traditionally, shared modes have been buses, coaches, trams, trains and air. Now there are shared cars through car clubs, personal rapid transport (PRT), and taxi services, and shared bicycles such as the London Barclays bike scheme. Mobile technologies and the rise of the ‘app’ have become particularly useful in facilitating shared transport opportunities (e.g. Barclays bike hire scheme in London).

Speculating on urban futures, Sheller and Urry (2003) considered the notion of public/private and the potential reconfiguration of the city with shared automated ‘pods’. Feasibility studies and trials of personal rapid transport systems are now underway. Yet as Latour (1996) explores in his tale of Aramis, future visions of re-scripting mobility practices demand complex enrollments between politics, technical developers, communities, etc. Do such sociological interpretations and theoretical ideas assist in the implementation of shared schemes and the social diffusion of new collective mobility mechanisms?

Sharing transport presents challenges to the notion of individual ownership, and opens new debates around:-

• how shared transport is theoretically conceptualized;
• how it is conceived, designed, delivered and managed;
• the spatial impacts that might emerge from new networks;
• how it is modeled and evaluated; and
• how it is experienced and perceived by the public.

This session seeks abstracts that present evidence from new ‘shared’ schemes, theoretical concepts of sharing and social practices, and new methodological approaches for modelling use and networks, and understanding of the user experience of shared transport.

Please email your abstract of 250 words (max) to Juliet Jain Juliet.Jain@uwe.ac.uk and Graham Parkhurst Graham.Parkhurst@uwe.ac.uk by the 30th January 2013.

References see:

Sheller, M. and Urry, J., ‘Mobile Transformations of “Public” and “Private” Life’, Theory, Culture and Society, 20: 3 (2003), pp. 107-125

Sheller, M. and Urry, J., ‘The City and the Car’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 24, No. 4, (2000) pp. 737-57

Postgraduate Prize

Eligible author presenters are encouraged to submit a paper for the Postgraduate Paper Prize, which is will be sponsored by Emerald Publishing in 2013. There is a first prize of £100, and a runner-up prize of a book chosen from the Emerald transport titles.

To enter for the prize, a full paper of not more than 6000 words should be submitted to the Secretary of the TGRG (Kate Pangbourne, k.pangbourne@abdn.ac.uk) no later than 5pm on the Friday of the week prior to the conference.

Eligibility:

Eligibility is restricted to post-graduate students (or those who have had their viva within six months of the date of the conference) presenting their own work. There is a presumption that the papers ought to be sole authored.

AAG 2013 Call for Papers

Call for Papers for the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers

AAG, Los Angeles, April 9-13, 2013

Contesting and Constructing Spaces of Mobility and Transport

Transportation geography is positioned to make important contributions to emerging debates in spatial theory and planning practice, including a significant ‘mobilities’ turn in the social sciences and the challenge of sustainable transport in transport/urban planning. But if the subfield has helped advance understanding of spatial processes in the past, ranging from quantitative modeling to the explicit inclusion of different in social analyses, some argue it must move beyond these decades-old advances (Hanson 2006).  For example, processes of political-economic change like neoliberalism — at a variety of scales — are largely structured through transportation; the new field of mobilities has underlined the importance of the social meanings of transportation and mobility across all modes (Sheller and Urry 2006); and planners confront the challenge of greening transport and improving quality of life. But there remains to be seen how a critical engagement with institutions, practices, and discourses of transportation modes and infrastructures might contribute to understanding and engaging contemporary social, political, and economic challenges.

For this session, we are looking for papers that critically engage the spatialities of transportation, including mobile bodies and material (human/non-human, vehicular and non-vehicular), transport nodes and places, territories and scales, networks/infrastructure, and the spatial practices and relations that connect them. By “critical,” we mean an approach that highlights the power geometries (Massey, 1994) of transport systems, critiquing mobile actors and infrastructures, analyzing discourses of transportation and policy, or exploring the contested nature of spaces and places of transportation and mobility. But we also seek papers that explore the ways people, including planners, contest and construct transportation spaces in pursuit of more just and sustainable alternatives. Much as the mobilities literature has brought together multiple disciplines and upset the notion that sedentarism is the default state of affairs, we seek to contribute to geographical and planning debates by considering the political economy of transportation and infrastructure as it is and has been, and the possibilities for positive change.

If you are interested in participating in this session, please submit your abstract to the AAG and then contact us with your PIN: Julie Cidell, University of Illinois, jcidell@illinois.edu; or David Prytherch, Miami University of Ohio, prythedl@muohio.edu. This session is co-sponsored by the Energy and Environment, Transportation Geography, and Urban Geography Specialty Groups.

AND ANOTHER ONE!

Call for Papers: Urban Mobilities
2013 Annual Meeting of the AAG- Los Angeles

Session organizers:
Donald Anderson (Anthropology, Univ. of Arizona)
Asha Best (American Studies, Rutgers University)

Given that the upcoming meeting of the AAG is convening in the
hyper-car-cultured city of Los Angeles, it seems opportune to open up a
broader discussion about mobilities, immobilities and  moorings.
(Hannam, et al 2006) As Tim Cresswell (2010) has argued, mobility
involves movement, representation and practice—all three of which are
entangled with and permeated by political relations. That is to say, how
certain bodies move through space, the means with which they move, and
the types of spaces to which those bodies have access has political
meaning. This panel invites presentations that consider how the politics
of mobility shape contemporary cities. How are mobilities and
immobilities in urban settings produced, channeled, and contested? And
how are these im/mobilities transformed by new technologies (e.g. GPS
tracking, transit television, mobile apps, Intelligent Transportation
Systems, driverless cars)?

Potential topics include but are certainly not limited to:

• car cultures and the future of driving
• affect and mobile interactions
• “just in time” mobility
• the politics of waiting
• public transit as a racialized/gendered mode of travel
• mobile tracking as a marketing tool
• the production of mobile subjects as consumers
• built environment and the shape of urban flows
• splintering urbanism, stratified transportation
• cities as receptacles and generators of flows
• technology as psychogeographic mediator

Interested presenters should send a title and abstract of up to 250
words to dna@email.arizona.edu and asbest@scarletmail.rutgers.edu by
October 20th. Please include your PIN if you have already registered; if
you have not yet registered, please note that registration for the AAG
should be completed by October 24th, 2012.

Transfers – Call for papers

Call for Papers
Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies

Transfers, now entering its third year of publication, is emerging as a key
peer-reviewed platform for new research into the practices, experiences and
representations of disparate mobilities. Our newly expanded Editorial Team
invite submissions that address our central concern – to “rethink mobility” in
the widest possible terms and from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives.
Intellectually rigorous, wide ranging, and conceptually innovative, Transfers
combines the empiricism of traditional mobility history with more recent theoretical approaches in the social sciences and the humanities. We interpret ‘transfers’ in its many senses: to move, shift, transmit, transform, change, and convey.

The journal’s scholarly essays, film, book and exhibition reviews, artwork, photography and special features are devoted to the ways in which
mobilities have been enabled, shaped and mediated across time and through
technological changes. We are interested in analyses of past and present
experiences of vehicle drivers, passengers, pedestrians, migrants and
refugees; accounts of the arrival and transformation of mobilities in different
nations and locales; and investigations into the kinetic processes of global
capital, technology, chemical and biological substances, images, narratives,
sounds, and ideas.

We especially encourage contributions that ‘rethink mobility’ through a
transnational, multimodal, or transdisciplinary perspective, and those dealing
with subversive (non-hegemonic) and subaltern (non-Eurocentric) mobilities,
including a focus on the infrastructures and practices of mobility that
contribute to uneven forms of access.

See http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/trans/

Editor:

Gijs Mom, Eindhoven University of Technology

Associate Editors:

Georgine Clarsen, The University of Wollongong
Nanny Kim, University of Heidelberg
Peter Merriman, University of Aberystwyth
Mimi Sheller, Drexel University, Philadelphia
Heike Weber, Technical University of Berlin

Editorial Advisor:

Cotten Seiler, Dickinson College, Carlisle

Rudin Center Talk, NYU

Emerging Cultures of Mobility

mobilities Center Director Dr. Mimi Sheller Gave An invited Talk at New York University’s Rudin Center for transportation policy and management

Thursday, April 7, 2011 @ 8:30 AM

Slides from Dr. Sheller’s Talk can be downloaded here:

Slides for Emerging Cultures of Mobility Talk by Mimi Sheller [pdf]

How Americans Get to Work - US Census Bureau 2007

Dr. Mimi Sheller, Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy, gave a talk on “Emerging Cultures of Mobility: Stability, Openings, Prospects” at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management, New York University, on April 7th, 2011, 8:30-10:00am in the Puck building, 295 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY. The talk is based on her chapter in the forthcoming book:

Automobility in transition? A socio-technical analysis of sustainable transport, Eds. René Kemp, Geoff Dudley, Frank Geels, and Glenn Lyons (Routledge, 2011)

Link: View a Trailer for the book here

Abstract:

In recent years there have been significant shifts in the planning, design and funding of major urban infrastructure projects to include “sustainable mobility” systems, including improved bicycling infrastructure; congestion charging and dynamic road pricing; new investments in energy-efficient public transport systems, light-rail systems and high-speed railway; the emergence of car-sharing and public bike-sharing schemes; and the design of pedestrian-friendly streets and smaller electric vehicles. Yet arguably none of these niche-level changes has seriously challenged the existing system of automobility, which continues to be the dominant mode of transportation, especially in the United States. The USA especially trails behind other advanced economies in bringing about a transition in its transportation and mobility systems. Building on previous work on cultures of automobility, this talk argues for a culturally-based understanding of the problems of system lock-in and potential transition. It aims to assess the openings and prospects for the emergence of new cultures of mobility in the United States, while also being realistic about the stabilities in the current mobility system. It begins with a model of culture as a combination of practices, networks, and discourses, each of which is enacted across multiple levels in the transition process. The next section turns to examples of cultural mechanisms that have stabilized the dominance of automobility in the United States, as well as instances of openings in the regime at both the national and urban scale. Finally, it concludes with some speculative ideas about the emergence of a more far-reaching technological – and cultural – transition arising out of the dynamics of new information and communication technologies entering the realm of transportation planning, design, and innovation.

For more information please contact:

Marilyn Lopez

Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management

New York University

Robert F. Wagner Graduate School

295 Lafayette St, 2nd Floor

New York, New York 10012

P: 212.992.9865

F: 212.995.4166

http://wagner.nyu.edu/rudincenter/

Mobilities in Motion Conference Update

Conference Flyer (pdf)

The Center for Mobilities Research and Policy is hosting the international conference “Mobilities in Motion: New Approaches to Emergent and Future Mobilities” from March 21st-23rd, 2011, in Behrakis Hall South. Keynote speakers include: Rina Cutler, Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Utilities, Philadelphia; Caren Kaplan, University of California, Davis; Deborah Cowen, University of Toronto; and Adriana de Souza e Silva, IT University of Copenhagen/North Carolina State.

In the near future the carbon-based mobilities of the 20th century will likely be replaced by alternative transport systems and fuels, and perhaps less mobile societies. At the same time, new mobile social media, locative social networks, and digital arts are handling movement and connectivity in new ways, creating new kinds of hybrid public spaces. Join us as we discuss the future of mobilities.

This event is open to the Drexel Community and other academics, but registration is required: https://deptapp.drexel.edu/mobilities/

Please see the Conference webpage for some updates and to download the full program.

Dr. Lee Schipper – Carbon in Motion

Mobilities Visiting Speaker

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011 10-11am, Macalister Hall 2019

Dr. Lee Schipper

Carbon in Motion 2050 for North America and Latin America

A PDF of the Powerpoint Slides from Dr. Schipper’s talk available here: [co2-scenarios-drexel]

Global trends in CO2 emissions by region

This study presents a set of two low carbon transportation scenarios, Globalization and Glocalization, where carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions could be heavily reduced in North American and Latin America. The scenarios illustrate how different policy assumptions and energy intensities could reduce emissions through a long-term projection approach. Three main policy groups, transportation technologies and strategies, land use planning and pricing instruments design, are assumed to trigger modal shifts and trip reductions. In Globalization, strong international cooperation to decrease CO2 emissions leads to innovations in vehicle technologies and stricter standards, while in Glocalization, local concerns for reducing transportation problems lower distance traveled and create modal shifts to less CO2 intensive modes, through significant changes in land use and transportation planning. Under Glocalization, total transportation CO2 emission in 2050 is approximately 78 percent less than in the “Business as Usual” (BAU) scenario for North America. Similarly for Latin America, CO2 emission in 2050 is 76 percent less than BAU. The changes envisaged in these scenarios differ for the highly motorized North America and the currently less motorized Latin America. North America must bring about reductions in total distance traveled by automobiles and air, whereas Latin American is still able to expand automobile use and air travel, yet not at its existing rate. Both regions must adopt low-carbon technologies, which may be easier for Latin America, since there is less capital sunk in a carbon intensive transportation system.

Dr. Lee Schipper

Lee Schipper joined the Precourt Institute of Energy Efficiency at Stanford in September, 2008 to develop his research and policy studies of efficient energy use in transport systems into a unique course, “Sustainable Mobility”. Dr. Schipper earned his B.A. in music and Ph.D. at Berkeley in astrophysics, but has devoted his career to earthly problems of transport, energy and environment. He is also currently Senior Project Scientist at Global Metropolitan Studies, UC Berkeley. From 2002 to 2007, Dr. Schipper was Director of Research for EMBARQ, the World Resources Institute (WRI) Center for Sustainable Transport, which he helped found in April, 2002. He came to EMBARQ from the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, where he had been visiting Scientist from 1995 to 2001. Previous to that he was Staff Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for two decades. He worked in Group Planning at Shell International Petroleum Company in the 1980s and again in 2001, where he worked on two sets of Shell Scenarios. He has been a guest researcher at the World Bank, VVS Tekniska Foerening (Stockholm), the OECD Development Center, and the Stockholm Environment Institute. Dr. Schipper has authored over 100 technical papers and a number of books on energy economics and transportation around the world.

See more interesting data here on global carbon dioxide emissions:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121240453

 

The Mobilities Visiting Speaker Series is a forum for leading scholars invited by the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy to present new research in the fields of mobilities research, tourism studies, migration and border studies, mobile communications, new mobile media, and related interdisciplinary areas. The talks are open to the entire Drexel community and invited guests from the region. For more information about this free series, please contact Mimi Sheller at mimi.sheller@drexel.edu.

Battles of mobilities

Battles of mobilities? utopias for a different future

Special session at the 4th Nordic Geographers Meeting in Roskilde, Denmark, May 24-27, 2011

Planning cities with the goal of economic growth as the primary objective has been the way forward for cities during the last century.

Because of the firmly seated discourse that more mobility gives more growth, city planning has been centred on creating infrastructural systems, dominated by an autologic. The private car has been seen as the starting point for growth, alongside the logistic networks).

Today, we see cities where the consequences of these planning strategies are visible and showing. Especially larger cities are articulating the unintended consequences of mobility and their infrastructural systems. Sudjic (2007) conveys this in the book The Endless City saying that: “it may well be that cities are more often the product of unintended consequences than of anything else” (35).

Between 25-50 % of city space are used to facilitate automobility thus automobility has a strong grip on everyday life, and constitutes a great challenge for cities. It occupies a large amount of space, space that could be used for social and cultural activities.

Thus the question of mobility can be a discussion of equity and democracy in the city. Questioning the right and access to city space can for instance be seen through the international monthly event called Critical Mass where cyclists take over the streets stating “we are not blocking traffic, we are traffic”.

Mobility research has evolved during the last decade to understand and grasp these battles and new ways of understanding the city. New mobile social media, innovative social networks and arts are questioning movement and connectivity in new ways. Thus new cultures of mobility are emerging, as people challenges environmental issues, this demands all kinds of different solutions, new thinking, experimentation and living differently.

The session will  explore these themes, among others:

• Mobility conflicts and power struggles
• The right to the city
• Ambivalences of mobile everyday life
• Sustainable mobility

Interested participants should send an abstract of maximum 300 words before the 20th of January 2011 to Malene Freudendal-Pedersen (malenef@ruc.dk) or Jonas Larsen (jonslar@ruc.dk)

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen

Assistant professor, PhD

Roskilde University

Department for Environmental, Social and Spatial Change

House 10.1

Box 260

4000 Roskilde

Moving Minds

Moving Minds – After the Car

Congress on Sustainable Urban Mobility

30 November 2010 – Brussels (Kaaitheater, Sainctelettesquare 20)
Keynote speaker: prof. John Urry (UK) + experts from Amsterdam, Brussels, Stockholm and Zurich

SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION  E > NL/FR & NL > E/FR / Conference Fee: 10€ / Registration: tickets@kaaitheater.be

We are still stuck in a traditional mindset when it comes to mobility, whereby the increasing car and truck traffic determines policy, which then inevitably leads to more infrastructure. However, many foreign cities have since shown that thinking and acting differently in the area of mobility is possible.  Moving Minds / After The Car aims to highlight these good examples and use the imagination to reflect upon a new paradigm of mobility.

PROGRAM
Welcome speech
BRUNO DE LILLE, Secretary of State for Mobility in the Brussels Capital Region

* The road to nowhere
Impact of traffic on urban livability, environment and health
NINA RENSHAW, deputy director of the European NGO Transport & Environment (T&E)

* The Future (Unplugged) – Energy beyond oil
RUDY DHONT, lecturer KHLeuven

*Envisioning the Future: Keynote lecture
JOHN URRY, Distinguished professor, Dept. of Sociology, University of Lancaster (Auteur van / Author of After the car)

* Stockholm: A city on the Way?
Congestion taxation, road development, and public transport as key components in Stockholm’s strategy for sustainable mobility
KAROLINA ISAKSSON, Swedish National Road and Transportation Research Institute

* Zürich: The city of public transport / on its way to the 2000 Watt-Society
MARKUS KNAUSS, coordinator of Zürich Office of VCS (Swiss Association for Transport and Environment) and Head of Greens in City Council of Zürich

* Amsterdam – city of pedestrian emperor and cyclist king
FJODOR MOLENAAR, Gemeenteraadslid GroenLinks Amsterdam / GroenLinks Member of City Council Amsterdam

* Brussels: heading to a sustainable Mobility
ARNAUD VERSTRAETE, adviseur van de Brusselse Staatssecretaris voor Mobiliteit / advisor of Brussels Secretary of State for Mobility

* Mind the gap
The need for a paradigm shift: on the road and in our heads
Closing Address by DIRK HOLEMANS, coördinator Oikos

More info? -> mail dirk.holemans@oikos.be

With the financial support of the European Parliament to the Green European Foundation. The European Parliament is not responsible for the content.

Mobility in Megacities Fellowship

Mobility Cultures in Megacities

The Institute for Mobility Research (ifmo), a research facility of BMW Group, is pleased to announce an international call to researchers for up to 6 post-doctoral fellowships within the strategic field of “Mobility Cultures in Megacities”.

Megacities in 2015 (UN-2002)

Duration of Fellowship: 6 months (extension of 2 months possible)

Location: Munich, Germany

Academic Partners: Technische Universität München

Goethe Universität Frankfurt

Disciplines: Urban transport and mobility; social sciences with a specialisation in mobility and transport research; other fields of study directly related

Background and objectives

The major objective of the program is to generate a profound understanding of mobility patterns and mobility cultures in megacities in different parts of the world. Fellows with a regional background in these cities are asked to collaborate on a set of research questions in an attractive, interdisciplinary and intercultural environment. The characteristics and challenges of the cities shown in the map have already been analysed – those places are of specific interest for the fellowship program.

Key research interests include

• Identifying the characteristics, opportunities and constraints of the megacity studied like demographic, social, economic and regulatory conditions.
• Analyzing long-term mobility decisions like location choice/urbanization, motorization,

• Studying every-day mobility patterns like activity-chains, mode and destination choices in function of spatial structure and transport supply as well as underlying social motivations.
• Investigating mobility cultures, lifestyles, perceptions and attitudes in the respective cities and their “points of entry” in order to learn if and how they might change over time.
• Assessing stakeholder interaction, local planning and policy discourses and their cultural background in order to develop perspectives for “good governance“.
• Identifying challenges and developing strategies for the future of urban mobility.

Further information and address for submission of applications

Institute for Mobility Research (ifmo)

A Research Facility of BMW Group

80788 München

Germany

E-mail: irene.feige@ifmo.de

Website: http://www.ifmo.de/

Please visit http://www.ifmo.de for further details and background on the current research approach.

Dean’s Seminar: Mobile Futures

The College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Seminar Series presents

“Mobile Futures: New Approaches to Mobilities Research and Public Policy” by Dr. Mimi Sheller

Wednesday, April 21, 2010  3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Disque Hall, Room 109 (32nd & Chestnut)

Dr. Mimi Sheller, Professor of Sociology and Director of the new Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel, will discuss the future of urban mobility in relation to the dynamic interaction between cultural practices and innovations.

There have been significant shifts recently in relation to sustainable mobility systems, including the emergence of car-sharing and public bike-sharing schemes; improved bike-lanes and multi-user vehicle lanes; the design of pedestrian-friendly streets; the use of smaller electric vehicles; and so on. Yet none of these incremental changes has seriously challenged the existing system of automobility, which continues to be the dominant mode of transportation in the USA.

Dr. Sheller suggests that the transition to sustainable transportation systems will unfold not simply through technological breakthroughs, or even political imagination, but will also require cultural innovation and deeper social change. Car consumption is never simply about rational economic choices, but is as much about aesthetic, emotional and sensory responses to driving, as well as patterns of kinship, sociability, habitation and work. This talk aims to assess the openings and prospects for the emergence of new cultures of mobility, while also being realistic about the stabilities in the current mobility system.

This event is free and open to students, faculty and staff. Light refreshments will be served.

For more information, please contact Amy Weaver at amw55@drexel.edu.