{"title":"Unruly Tramscapes","authors":"J. Finch","doi":"10.3167/trans.2022.120106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/trans.2022.120106","url":null,"abstract":"This article reappraises tramway closures in 1930s London by reading enthusiast memoirs of the events surrounding them. Literary representations in forms such as the novel and poetry of urban public transport experience often overlook experiences in peripheral urban zones and on modes such as the tramway which had a chiefly working-class ridership. Building a perspective around London’s tramscapes, and by practicing Deep Locational Criticism as part of a characteristically “humanities” mode, temporally focused, in mobility studies, the article reveals contestations including acts of disorder surrounding the closure events, deploying those in a rereading of mid-twentieth-century British history more broadly. The 1930s North London suburbs emerge through a reading of George Atkins’s account of 1938 closure events as sites of carnivalesque disorder and other bottom-up transport-focused activity, including the formation of enthusiast groups. This group of practices opposed the extremely top-down transport planning of the post-1933 London Passenger Transport Board’s management.","PeriodicalId":43789,"journal":{"name":"Transfers-Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84190716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"East to West to South to North—and Back","authors":"M. Moser","doi":"10.3167/trans.2022.120104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/trans.2022.120104","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I map out landscaping practices by Thuringian long-distance truck drivers. Drawing on extended fieldwork, I show that contemporary truck drivers who drive the German and European highways with their political (and often racist) ideas in tow, structure their landscapes according to the four cardinal points. While getting disillusioned by experiences of an unwelcoming West that loses its utopic shine it had during the times of the German separation, Thuringian drivers strongly refuse to subsume themselves into a European East, which they “orientalize” as dangerous and barbaric. I argue that as a solution to this lived tension between East/West, Thuringian truckers increasingly relocate utopic places into the European North and South while intermingling geographies with ideologies, drawing especially from popular country music.","PeriodicalId":43789,"journal":{"name":"Transfers-Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83471064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anxious Mobilities","authors":"Christoph Schimkowsky","doi":"10.3167/trans.2022.120109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/trans.2022.120109","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic has not just prompted the widespread deceleration and halting of human movement, but also reconfigured enduring mobilities. This visual essay examines work commutes on Tokyo’s urban railway system as an example of an urban mobility practice that partially withstood the immobilizing effect of the pandemic. Combining text and comic-style drawings, it explores the viral transformation of passenger practices and experiences during Tokyo’s first “state of emergency” (April–May 2020) to ask how passengers on one of the world’s busiest urban railway systems learned to move with viral risk in a city that refrained from imposing official mobility restrictions. The essay introduces the notion of anxious mobilities to highlight how mobility experiences and practices in pandemic cities came to be characterized by a sense of unease. It calls attention to undulating processes of (de)sensitization to risk that mobile subjects may undergo when movement becomes associated with danger.","PeriodicalId":43789,"journal":{"name":"Transfers-Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies","volume":"9 43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87111395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unruly Landscapes and the City of London","authors":"S. Mains","doi":"10.3167/trans.2022.120105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/trans.2022.120105","url":null,"abstract":"Photography narrates places through space and time. It is a storytelling method and format that not only reflects the landscapes viewed, but can also act as a catalyst for reflection and critical engagement with hidden mobilities that are in plain sight. In this article I illustrate the ways in which photography offers a unique opportunity to humanize and critique economic crises and unequal experiences of urban landscapes. Drawing on research in mobility studies, media studies, and cultural geography, this study interweaves interdisciplinary approaches to representation and urbanization to highlight the importance of visual narratives in how we negotiate and manage city life. Examining the work of Stephen McLaren, specifically through his photographic series, The Crash: London’s Finance Disaster 2008, this article analyzes the ways in which photography brings into relief both public and private relationships with place and finance. By directly examining the use of photography, singular narratives of economic and social mobility are called into question, while an important entryway is opened into a more nuanced use of critical visual analysis to understand shifting mobilities, and economic and emotional geographies. Visual media analysis offers an opportunity to move beyond representations of crises, and their related built environments, as exceptional and distinct, highlighting instead an often hidden series of related contradictory socio-spatial mobilities.","PeriodicalId":43789,"journal":{"name":"Transfers-Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74135513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Transformation of Urban Mobility Practices in Maastricht (1950–1980)","authors":"M. Dijk, Anique Hommels, M. Stoffers","doi":"10.3167/trans.2021.110303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/trans.2021.110303","url":null,"abstract":"This article reconstructs the historical transformation of mobility in the city of Maastricht in the period 1950–1980, from cycling as the most popular mode of traveling in the 1950s to car driving by the end of the 1970s. Based on an analysis of written sources and oral history interviews with Maastricht travelers and other practitioners who experienced this shift themselves, this article sheds light on this historical transformation, its key actors, and its main drivers. Combining insights from studies of social practice-based perspectives on mobility, historical sociotechnical transitions, and the model of urban obduracy, this study seeks to contribute to understanding why and how cities may transform toward being unsustainable places. Furthermore, it aims to show how social practice approaches can give more context-sensitive insights into processes of transformation and transition compared to established MLP-based transition approaches, by giving more attention to local meanings.","PeriodicalId":43789,"journal":{"name":"Transfers-Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies","volume":"158 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82915239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Potentiality to Move","authors":"Patrícia Matos, E. Ardévol","doi":"10.3167/trans.2021.110304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/trans.2021.110304","url":null,"abstract":"The digital nomad lifestyle, which combines remote work and travel, has grown in the last decade among tech and creative industry professionals. “Freedom,” “inspiration,” and “work–life balance” are frequently mentioned by respondents when describing what led them to be location-independent workers. This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Barcelona. From participant observation and in-depth interviews, we study participants’ socialities and narratives to analyze the imaginaries that connect work, mobility, and lifestyle. We argue that digital nomadism is not solely centered on constant travel, but on the potential to move. This points to understanding mobility in relation to the future, not only in the form of participants’ aspirations but also their anticipatory practices. Despite the massive impact of the coronavirus pandemic on many aspects of people’s lives, mobility being just one of them, we believe that such imaginaries still persist.","PeriodicalId":43789,"journal":{"name":"Transfers-Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84531276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Temporality of and Competition between Infrastructures","authors":"Jack Linzhou Xing","doi":"10.3167/trans.2021.110305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/trans.2021.110305","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the competition between taxis and e-hailing from the perspective of the temporality of infrastructures, which refers to 1) decay and maintenance of infrastructures, 2) imaginations of infrastructures regarding old, new, past, and future, and 3) the (spatio)temporal experience of infrastructure supporters. I propose that taxis and e-hailing are simultaneously transport and livelihood infrastructures that facilitate passengers’ and drivers' lives, and that they are maintained by the two parties. One reason that taxis are maintained in this competition lies in taxi drivers’ preference for taxis as a livelihood infrastructure. The article highlights infrastructure supporters’ labor and spatiotemporal experience, emphasizes the importance of the perspective of the decay and maintenance of infrastructures, and proposes a dialectic view of the infrastructure-related imaginations of old and new, especially in a context in which disruptive innovations in infrastructural technologies are continuously emerging.","PeriodicalId":43789,"journal":{"name":"Transfers-Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88844013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Atlantics","authors":"Tina Montenegro","doi":"10.3167/trans.2021.110308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/trans.2021.110308","url":null,"abstract":"Mati Diop’s 2019 feature film Atlantics won the Grand Prix at Cannes that year. It is a polyphonic tale of migration, love, loss, and fantasy that takes place in Dakar, Senegal. Using fantasy and mystery to create opacity, as defined by the writer and theorist of postcolonialism Édouard Glissant, Diop seeks to give dignity to the victims of migration and to invite viewers to establish a relationship with the film. The combination of diverse poetic lines gives the film striking richness and resonance, as well as the ability to comment on ociopolitical issues without being limited to one interpretation. Despite the immobility of the problems she brings to the screen, Diop transmits hope for other mobilities, which she herself brings to life and embodies.","PeriodicalId":43789,"journal":{"name":"Transfers-Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies","volume":"65 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86055424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When One Becomes Two","authors":"Lou Therese Brandner","doi":"10.3167/trans.2021.110306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/trans.2021.110306","url":null,"abstract":"In the Netherlands, where cycling is part of the “national habitus,” bicycle infrastructure is remarkably similar to car infrastructure. This article explores man–machine hybridization in the context of this spatial environment made for bikes, analyzing it through notions of human/nonhuman hybrids, cyborg bodies, and automobilized persons. The perceptions of urban cyclists who temporarily cannot cycle are explored, based on interviews with bike repair shop customers in Amsterdam. How does a broken bike impact their perception of themselves and the city? Within the sample, cyclists attribute an essential, corporeal value to their vehicles, regarding them as extensions of the body. Cycling is considered the natural way of moving through urban space, associated with freedom and independence; switching to public transportation induces feelings of dependence and handicap.","PeriodicalId":43789,"journal":{"name":"Transfers-Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86420079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Healthy Mobilities","authors":"S. Bell, S. Cook","doi":"10.3167/trans.2021.110207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/trans.2021.110207","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we articulate a distinct conceptual direction at the intersection of health and mobilities scholarship that centers on healthy mobilities. We take inspiration from relational, multiscalar, and more-than-human approaches to foreground an approach that asks what being in everyday healthy motion may entail and whose health is considered. We trace this approach through two brief provocations: exercise and differential mobilities, including the finely tuned movement-repertoires developed by disabled people. These illustrate the value of healthy mobilities, beyond humancentric, cure-oriented approaches to health, to understandings of how health takes shape among diverse living entities in motion. This focus can help foreground the interdependence of human, nonhuman, and planetary health in mobilities.","PeriodicalId":43789,"journal":{"name":"Transfers-Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies","volume":"195 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79829428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}