Commoning accessibility in (European) peripheries: exploring the practice policy nexus

Abstract

In many peripheral areas across Europe accessibility is under pressure due to the centralisation and withdrawal of important services and the privatisation and deregulation of public transport. This paper examines how community responses to these accessibility challenges are shaped by policy agendas and conditions. Conceptually, it builds on the notion of “commoning accessibility” (CA), which has recently been coined to account for the various ways in which communities mobilise and organise themselves to (re)claim accessibility as a common good. CA practices include community transport and shared mobility schemes, as well as collective efforts to create and maintain place-based social, cultural and care amenities such as a shops, cafés, neighbourhood centres, or healthcare facilities. This paper further advances the theorisation of “commoning accessibility” by critically situating these practices as part of wider assemblages of governance and changing configurations of the welfare state. To that end, we have conducted a systematic literature review that maps how CA practices are shaped by policy agendas and conditions, thereby focusing explicitly on peri-urban, suburban and rural areas across Europe. Based on our findings we present an analytical framework that distinguishes between commoning as a process and accessibility as an objective. We show that policy shapes both the conditions under which people unite, mobilise and organise themselves, and the way in which accessibility is articulated, translated and pursued as an objective. Moreover, our literature review reveals that these diverse policy factors cannot be reduced to mere legislative changes or administrative and institutional realities but also relate to policymaking as an exercise in agenda-setting. Unravelling this complex relationship between CA practices and policy is an important step towards understanding when and under which circumstances these practices can play a transformative role in meeting accessibility challenges in peripheral areas.