Extended Mobility for the City as a Common by Capanema-Alvares, Lucia; Orrico, Romulo;

Short description:

This book invites readers to critically examine the ways in which stigmatization and socioeconomic barriers combine to restrict access to urban opportunities for marginalized communities. Arguing that the right to the city is inseparable from the right to mobility, this book calls for a radical shift toward a welcoming and solidary city.

Long description:

Extended Mobility for the City as a Common offers a novel framework for understanding how urban inhabitants access and experience cities. It invites readers to critically examine the ways in which stigmatization and socioeconomic barriers combine to restrict access to urban opportunities for marginalized communities. Arguing that the right to the city is inseparable from the right to mobility, this book calls for a radical shift toward a welcoming and solidary city, both in transportation systems and in the inhabitants’ destinations.

This book is structured into three parts. Part I introduces the concept of “Extended Mobility,” a multidimensional framework encompassing motility, accessibility, and porosity that provides a new lens to interrogate the multifaceted nature of mobility as a social phenomenon. Part II applies this framework through a grounded ethnographic comparison of Favela da Maré in Rio de Janeiro and the San Siro housing project in Milan. These rich and detailed studies develop robust methodological tools and theoretical insights that uncover the complex mobility experiences of peripheral urban inhabitants. In the final section, leading experts in transportation and urban planning engage Extended Mobility across different global settings to critique existing policies and explore pathways toward mobility justice and a city of rights for all.

By integrating structural and experiential perspectives on urban mobility, this book is an essential resource for social science researchers and urban and transportation planning scholars as well as policymakers, practitioners, and activists seeking to foster more inclusive cities and empower communities to access the full possibilities of a common urban life.

Chapters 1, 4, 7, and the Introduction of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license.

"This book is an invitation – and a practical guide – to radically rethink mobility in cities, breaking with the prevalent profit seeking paradigm of offer/demand. It advocates for commoning decision-making processes in transportation and urban planning, for the adoption of inclusive and equitable accessibility measures, and for anti-stigmatization through participation, conviviality and solidarity."

Raquel Rolnik, Professor, University of São Paulo, Brazil, and Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing

"This book offers inspiration and insights through a fresh perspective on mobility that is both theoretically robust and solidly grounded in the lived experiences of urban citadins (i.e. citizens). By looking across the globe at a variety of urban contexts, the authors expose the constraints and possibilities for urban policy and planning to create new perceptions, motivations, and lived opportunities for the people who inhabit them."

Margaret Wilder, PhD, Executive Director, Urban Affairs Association

"The book extends our understandings of mobility to focus on people’s travel experiences through the entire urban continuum. It succeeds in bringing transport policy and planning under the direct scrutiny of the social sciences, offering pithy ethnographic case studies to position transport as a Commons to enhance citizens’ rights to the city."

Karen Lucas, Professor, University of Manchester, UK

"Mobility and immobility are extraordinary indicators of inequality in contemporary societies. The book explores what the right to mobility looks like in many parts of the world. It is precious because it does not content itself with describing the phenomenon but also points out ways to extend this right as a precondition for giving access to a good life."

Alessandro Balducci, Professor, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

"This book offers a fresh and holistic perspective on urban mobility, and convincingly argues that mobility should be understood as a fundamental urban right, and the city as common, providing examples and lessons from the global North and South."

Karst Geurs, Professor, University of Twente, the Netherlands

Table of Contents:

Editor's introduction  Foreword  Introduction  Part I. Theorizing Extended Mobility and understanding the city as a common  1. Extended Mobility and the right to the city as a common  2. Porosity for a city of commons: confronting segregation and hostility in Europe  3. Public transport, Extended Mobility and the common: potential tools to promote a welcoming city  Part II. Building knowledge from theory to practice in Milan and Rio de Janeiro  4. Building knowledge about Extended Mobility  5. Extended (im)mobility among Rio de Janeiro’s poor: a case study of Favela da Maré  6. Unequal Extended Mobility among migrants in Milan: a case study of San Siro  7. Lessons on empowering inhabitants through Extended Mobility and the commons  Part III. A global look at Extended Mobility: transportation policies, limits and potentialities  8. Mobility Policies and public policies in Southeast Asia: the case of active transport and motorcycle taxis in Metro Manila, Philippines  9. Extended Mobility and citizen-oriented public policies in Western Europe  10. Effects of fare-free public transport policies on Extended Mobility and urban access in Libreville, Gabon  11. Extended Mobility, actual travel needs, and geographies of opportunity in the United States  12. Conclusion: policies and paths for a common and Extended Mobility worldwide