### **Re-thinking Mobility Poverty**

This book seeks to better conceptualise and define mobility poverty, addressing both its geographies and socio-economic landscapes. It moves beyond the analysis of 'transport poverty' and innovatively explores mobility inequalities and social construction of mobility disadvantages.

The debate on mobility poverty is gaining momentum due to its role in triggering social exclusion and economic deprivation. In this light, this book examines the social construction of mobility poverty by delving into mobility patterns and needs as they are differently experienced by social groups in different geographical situations. It considers factors such as the role of transport regimes and their social value when analysing the social construction of individual´s mobility needs. Furthermore, the gaps between articulated and unarticulated needs are identified by observing actual travel patterns of individuals. The book offers a comparison of the global phenomenon through fieldwork conducted in six different European c ountries – Greece, Portugal, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania and Germany.

This book will be useful reading for planners, sociologists, geographers, mobility/transport researchers, mobility advocates, policy-makers and transport practitioners.

**Tobias Kuttler** is a geographer and urban planner, working on urban development, mobility and social disadvantage. He is a researcher at TU Berlin and PhD Candidate at TU Munich. He is writing his PhD dissertation on the transformation of the taxi industry in Mumbai, India.

**Massimo Moraglio** is a Senior Researcher at Technische Universität Berlin and Coordinator of the MBA "Sustainable Mobility". His work explores the relationship between technology and society, focusing on scenarios and transitions. He is a member of the editorial board of *Mobilities* and *Applied Mobilities*, and editor-in-chief of *The Journal of Transport History*.

#### **Transport and Society** *Series Editor:* **John D. Nelson**

This series focuses on the impact of transport planning policy and implementation on the wider society and on the participation of the users. It discusses issues such as: gender and public transport, travel for the elderly and disabled, transport boycotts and the civil rights movement etc. Interdisciplinary in scope, linking transport studies with sociology, social welfare, cultural studies and psychology.

#### **The Mobilities Paradigm**

Discourses and Ideologies *Edited by Marcel Endres, Katharina Manderscheid and Christophe Mincke*

#### **Ports as Capitalist Spaces**

A Critical Analysis of Devolution and Development *Gordon Wilmsmeier and Jason Monios*

#### **Non-motorized transport integration into urban transport planning in Africa**

*Edited by Winnie Mitullah, Marianne Vanderschuren and Meleckidzedeck Khayesi*

#### **Assembling Bus Rapid Transit in the Global South**

Translating Global Models, Materialising Infrastructure Politics *Malve Jacobsen*

#### **Re-thinking Mobility Poverty**

Understanding Users´ Geographies, Backgrounds and Aptitudes *Edited by Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Transport-and-Society/book-series/TSOC

# **Re-thinking Mobility Poverty**

Understanding Users' Geographies, Backgrounds and Aptitudes

**Edited by Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio**

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

*Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business*

© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio; individual chapters, the contributors

The rights of Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, have been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

*Trademark notice*: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

*British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data* A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

*Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data* A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-33330-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-33331-7 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

**I dedicate this work/this volume to my parents, Erika and Franz (TK)**

### **Contents**

### **Figures**

## **Tables**

## **Contributor biographies**

#### xvi *Contributor biographies*

Intelligent Transport Systems and Computer Science. He is the author of over 50 academic articles and five books.

### **Acknowledgements**

Apart from the authors of this volume, the following persons contributed to this publication project by performing fieldwork in the respective countries: Norman Döge, Valentina Fava, Mahendra Singh Chouhan, Johanna Helene Ostendorf (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany), Andrea Selan (TRT, Italy), Martin Kracheel, François Sprumont (LUXM, Luxembourg), Maggie Poupli (INTRA, Greece), Susana Castelo, Fátima Santos (TIS, Portugal). The book editors and authors express their gratitude to all the contributors.

The book editors and authors are highly indebted to the fieldwork participants, especially the focus group participants, who generously opened up to the research teams and provided first hand experiences and information. The editors and authors would like to thank the following institutions and their representatives:

#### xx *Acknowledgements*

The book editors and authors furthermore would like to thank the local organisations and their representatives, who worked with the research teams locally and thereby made the fieldwork possible:

We owe gratitude to Alison Hindley Chatterjee for her patient and thorough proof-reading and editing of the draft manuscript. The editors would like to thank Theresa Zimmermann for her helpful and poignant comments on the draft version of the book.

### **Disclaimers**

*This document is part of HiReach, a project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 769819.*

*The sole responsibility for the content of this document lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.*

*The authors acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Fund of Technische Universität Berlin.*

### **Preface**

### *Silvia Maffii and Simone Bosetti*

This book has been prepared by an international team of multidisciplinary experts and researchers sharing a common interest in the themes of the mobility of vulnerable groups, accessibility of peripheral and rural areas, "transport poverty" and a common belief that the issues of inclusive mobility and equity are becoming more and more relevant due to societal changes and new transport policy paradigms of "mobility for all".

The expert team has been cooperating in the three-year (2017–2020) research project HiReach: "High reach innovative mobility solutions to cope with transport poverty". The project was funded under the "Smart, green and integrated transport" thematic area of the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020.

The topic addressed by the HiReach project consists in improving accessibility, inclusive mobility and equity by obtaining a comprehensive view of the mobility needs and capabilities of vulnerable social groups living in unprivileged areas and by developing new tools and business models to address the needs of these people and to promote inclusive and participative mobility.

The HiReach project partnership bridges diverse sets of specialised skills and builds on strong integration and high complementarity of expertise. The partners include two universities (Technical University of Berlin and Politechnica University of Bucharest) to expand the competences in the academic field; one international organisation (the European Passengers' Federation – EPF) to enrich the perspective of public transport passengers across Europe; four consultancies in the field of transport planning, economics and innovation (Intrasoft, LuxMobility, TIS and TRT Trasporti e Territorio, the project leader); and one partner with strong links to the European start-ups ecosystem, Productised. Covering six countries – Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Luxembourg and Romania – the partnership guarantees a wide geographical coverage.

Seven vulnerable social groups have been specifically targeted in the project: low income and unemployed people; elderly people; children and young people; people with reduced mobility; migrants and ethnic minorities; women; and people living in rural and deprived areas. In addition, six study regions have been selected to cover all these typologies: the districts of Esslingen and Göppingen (Germany); Naxos and Small Cyclades (Greece); Southern Salento, inner area (Italy); Guarda and Torres Vedras (Portugal); North and South-East Luxembourg (Luxembourg); and Buzau (Romania).

The content of this book builds on the work carried out in the analytical phase of the project. This phase was dedicated to an in-depth comprehensive review of the mobility needs and capabilities of the seven vulnerable social groups living in different contexts across Europe. The subsequent phases were devoted to the exploration and development of innovative inclusive mobility solutions.

#### **The mobility needs of vulnerable users**

The focus of the analytical phase was the exploration of the travel behaviour and social habits of the targeted vulnerable groups as well as the assessment of their travel demand and mobility needs. Importantly, despite growing awareness, transport poverty has not been comprehensively described as a concept yet. Academia, policy-makers and practitioners still need to define and understand the full implications of this phenomenon. Consequently, the first step required the elaboration of the concept of transport poverty including a complex assessment of inequality and disadvantage, distinguishing between transportation-related disadvantage, social disadvantage and social exclusion.

Nobody would deny that the availability of transport options is vital to reach essential opportunities such as jobs, education, shops and friends. It is recognised that mobility is key to full participation in society and meaningful living. However, how this differs according to various economic, social and cognitive parameters and to what extent transport-related deficiencies affect individuals and groups are issues still to be fully explored. More specifically, two open questions are:

The HiReach project tried to adopt this complex local perspective, identifying common elements that produce transport poverty across Europe to help outline joint solutions in order to eliminate it.

Transport poverty has been investigated by looking at the most vulnerable groups: people experiencing material deprivation or physical impairment; migrants or those with an ethnic minority background; and different socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender) across different European urban, peri-urban and rural areas. It is important to underline that each vulnerable group exhibits unique mobility features and that people could be permanently or temporarily part of a vulnerable group during their lifetime and/or could belong to more than one group. In order to account for the complexity of this combination of social, contextual and relational disadvantages, each project's study region has been associated with two or more transport vulnerable social groups. The social groups taken into consideration include:

#### **The next steps: looking at the solutions**

The analytical work highlighted that to respond to the mobility needs of the vulnerable user group, the solutions should have a public transport component and either improve or complement the mass public transport system. The assessment of the current transport offer has identified three main clusters of mobility options and services as fields of application for inclusive mobility:

The final objective of HiReach is to find and exploit new business ideas that reach low-accessibility social groups and areas. Following the analytical stage, an exploratory phase of the project has critically assessed the limits of the current transport offer and has identified innovative frameworks and business models of new inclusive, affordable and reliable transport solutions. The purpose of these options is to fit the capabilities and attitudes of different targeted vulnerable groups, who could also be co-users and co-owners, and to provide users with suitable, reliable and affordable transport options to reach nearby or distant destinations in reasonable travel time and by using vehicles/infrastructures/services that are fully accessible, safe and relatively easy to use.

Among the innumerable examples, the HiReach project has handpicked 20 transport solutions to understand their accomplishments and limitations, to analyse their business models and management scheme and to examine the social/technological innovations brought by each solution. Those solutions with the highest potential for replication in other regions/countries have been studied in depth to understand the reason behind their success and the team looked in particular at (i) new organisational and business models; (ii) services that help to upgrade the present transport offer's image and attractiveness; (iii) enabling ICT solutions and interoperability rules to increase access and usage; and (iv) new forms of transport services based on the sharing economy and community-based principles.

This exploratory step has resulted in the elaboration of a set of recommendations on how to implement inclusive, affordable and reliable mobility solutions, which can be summarised as follows:

Recommendations, particularly for users and investors, were the starting point for the design and launch of the final phase of the HiReach project, that of development. This phase consisted in the development and testing of new mobility solutions tailored to the vulnerable groups through the creative work of start-ups, innovative entrepreneurs and local communities.

This is what happened within the HiReach Startup Lab, an acceleration program for innovative transport solutions that address transport poverty in Europe. In practical terms, several start-ups and young entrepreneurs were offered a unique opportunity to prototype inclusive mobility solutions for vulnerable groups with the support of a dedicated host company, professional business coaching, showcasing opportunities and financial support.

### **Foreword**

### A mobility justice lens on mobility poverty

*Mimi Sheller*

This book offers an important new framework for thinking about "mobility poverty". It extends beyond existing ideas of transport poverty by utilising new concepts such as social capital, motility, transport regimes and the social construction of transport needs. Drawing on case studies from several European countries, it encompasses different societal dimensions of mobility poverty. These include gender, income and employment, age, reduced mobility and the experiences of migrants, ethnic minorities, children and young people. Beyond that though, it offers important lessons for transportation planning around the world, by pushing us to connect mobility poverty to wider issues of mobility justice. It is this concern that I want to draw attention to here.

As movements and policy-makers around the world seek to create more sustainable mobilities, it is crucial to pay attention to the intersectionality of various kinds of mobility injustice and the impact of changing infrastructural and regulatory systems on those affected by "mobility poverty". Without a clear conceptualisation of *mobility justice,* energy transition policies will continue to reproduce patterns of land use and investment that end up benefitting mainly the kinetic elite by leaving in place the advantages for those who already exercise mobility power. Why should the majority be subjected to mobility austerity (carbon pricing, congestion pricing, higher fuel taxes) or to greater policing of their movements (new border regimes, security surveillance, policing of travellers), when it is the small minority of high consumers of mobility and energy who have produced the vast majority of harmful emissions that contribute to climate change and also drive climate-related migration?

This is the poignant question raised by movements of the "marginalised", ranging from the g*ilets jaunes,* who have protested fuel taxes in France, to the black, indigenous and people of colour social movements in the United States, such as People for Mobility Justice and Equiticity, who have questioned transport policies that serve the urban elite (Sheller 2018). Policies for carbon pricing, congestion charging or the creation of "safer" bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure should be carefully coupled with affordable housing policies around transit-oriented development to prevent the suburbanisation of poverty into car-dependent exurbs. Simply inserting carbon pricing, promoting transit-oriented development or subsidising electric vehicles may actually resist transformative change if it leaves unchallenged the underlying culture of private, individualised automobility and the spatial and social relations that go along with automobility, including the cultural discourses that equate personal private mobility with freedom and dominance (Freudendal-Pedersen 2009). Roads and highways dominate the built landscape and the over-arching mobility culture remains one in which automobility is normalised as freedom and associated with wealth and privilege.

The theory of mobility justice allows us to strengthen and foreground a vision for transport equity that includes an understanding of the historically uneven impacts of infrastructure on land use patterns that have created contemporary splintered urbanism, racial and class segregation, lack of accessibility and automobile dependence for those who can no longer afford the right to the city. Projects such as the "Green New Deal" in various countries must address the needs of the mobility poor who may not benefit from new infrastructure projects and may in fact be harmed and displaced by them. As John Urry showed us, the *dominant system of automobility* is not just a means of transportation, but is an interlocking system of social practices, industrial and business networks and ongoing relations between mobility, energy production, consumption and land use, intertwined in a complex system that is heavily influenced by powerful mobility regimes that work in the interest of "kinetic elites" (Sheller and Urry 2000; Urry 2007).

A holistic theory of mobility justice can help us perceive the connections across different regimes of mobility, spanning the scale of the unsafe mobilities experienced by women, children, the elderly, ethnic minorities and immigrants in many cities to the displacement of minority and working class communities by "green gentrification". At the same time, it can expose the relation between past histories of colonialism and the ease of travel for global elites occurring alongside the world-wide building of walls, detention of migrants and the breakdown of international agreements for the reception of refugees. While sustainable transportation is a crucial element of urban spatial justice, the mobility justice perspective can help us see the wider kinopolitical struggles embedded in these policies.

We need a vision for transport equity that includes an understanding of the uneven impacts of infrastructure on inequitable land use patterns understood in terms of segregation, lack of accessibility, "splintered urbanism" and "low-carbon gentrification". While building improved, protected cycling infrastructure has been heavily promoted by cycling advocates; in many cases such projects have inadvertently produced spaces of inequality and exclusion (Golub et al. 2019; Cox and Koglin 2020). Recent Vision Zero policies that increase the enforcement of violations, for example, have in the United States been found especially detrimental to utility cyclists and delivery riders, many of whom are racial minorities or immigrants (Lee et al. 2016). According to Stephen Zavestoski and Julian Agyeman, moreover, there is a "mobility bias" rooted in the neoliberal foundations of the Complete Streets concept, which has failed "to give voice to the historically marginalised" and, more broadly, "to approach streets as dynamic, fluid and public social places" (Zavestoski and Agyeman 2014).

There is a growing splintering of mobility systems into hypermobile, friction-free, rich arrays of mobility choices for the kinetic elite, who can afford to live in well-connected cities, versus the displacement, slow modes and burdensome travel for the mobility poor, who can no longer afford to live in places with good access to public transit. Sustainability transitions must also find ways to undo the land use patterns that have contributed to urban sprawl, urban gentrification, unaffordable housing and high automobile dependence amongst disinvested communities, who have been excluded from property-based wealth. We must advocate for defending rights to mobility and accessibility for under-resourced communities (including rural areas), expanding investment in public transit, including bus rapid transit, and improving inter-regional rail services, while also protecting and building affordable housing.

This calls for explicit reparations for the current harmful impacts of uneven infrastructure and uneven mobilities. We need to change land use rules, housing policies and energy grids and connect these projects to advancing mobility justice. This means better planning around the inter-relation of uneven geographies, uneven mobilities and the reproduction of class and racialised space, which is also of course gendered, sexed and abling/disabling. The freedom to move and to remain somewhere, to dwell in a place and to determine one's own personal and familial movements are fundamental elements of mobility justice. Access to sustainable low-carbon systems of transportation and public transit is one fundamental dimension of this struggle, but it is not the only one.

In addition, we must be willing to check the excessive mobility of "kinetic elites" by placing limits on unbridled energy consumption, excess travel and binge flying. Elite mobilities are often hidden or secluded from the public gaze; yet attention to privileged forms of mobility can help us better understand the power inherent in systems of uneven mobility. By recognising how power is exercised through the control of im/mobilities and spatial moorings, we can better understand the experience of mobility poverty. Anthony Elliott, for example, describes the mobile lives of "globals" who practise lifestyles of "detached engagement; floating; speed; networked possibilities; distance from locality and mapping of escape routes" (Elliott 2013). What of the lived experience of those without high motility? Uneven mobilities – including infrastructures of differential mobility and the hoarding of "mobility capital" by the kinetic elite – have produced the "mobility poor" and those who suffer most the public health burdens of the polluting fossil-fuel infrastructures and the sprawling suburbanisation associated with dominant systems of automobility and aeromobility.

The valorisation of friction-free mobility comes at the expense of those whose class, race, gender, age or abilities subjects them to slower travel, insecurity, policing, unsafe travel conditions, lack of access to travel documents and unhealthy low-waged work in which their time and movements are monopolised and controlled. We must be willing to set limits on the dominant systems of private automobility (and aeromobility) not only to reduce the excessive consumption of fossil-fuelled mobility by the kinetic elites but also to repair and prevent splintered urbanism, differential mobilities and the global resource extraction that leads to "climate colonialism". A mobility justice approach incorporates not only transportation justice but also recognises the wider coloniality of mobility regimes and the need for reparations. Intersectional struggles for mobility justice must address legacies of colonialism, present forms of coloniality and confront questions of access, control, ownership and capitalism.

Finally, we must also recognise the importance of democratising transportation planning processes, decision making and evaluation by including community-based organisations, many of which are already mobilising around mobility justice. For without mobility justice we will not achieve planetary sustainability. The path to sustainable mobilities will undoubtedly depend on embodied kinopolitical struggles that directly challenge the dominant system of automobility, calling out the history of green gentrification, the excesses of kinetic elites and the problems of extractive resource colonialism. Bringing many voices to the conversation and opening up transport planning to diverse stakeholders are crucial starting points through which we can attend to the critical analysis of mobility injustice and mobility poverty. I hope this valuable edited collection will be a good starting point to begin those difficult conversations.

#### **References**

## **Introduction**

*Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

#### **Abstract**

In this Introduction, the editors of the volume present its structure and address the theoretical background to the book. After defining the role of mobility in contemporary societies, this Introduction outlines the relationship between transport poverty and social exclusion. The authors demand a better definition and terminology of the subject, claiming that "mobility" poverty addresses the concepts better and in a sounder way. Finally, the Introduction calls for a closer cooperation between the different actors, with a stronger focus on the users of transport.

#### **Recent crises**

Recent crises – whether they are at global, regional or local level – demonstrate that *im/mobilities* are at the core of many conflicts. The ongoing global refugee crisis is a constant exercising of the right and ability to move and a demonstration of power to prevent and interrupt such movement. Conflicts over the ability to move can also inflame tensions about larger social, economic and political divides within societies. Questions of mobility seem to steer new and often surprising collaborations among those who consider themselves marginalised and excluded from dominant development discourses, such as the *gilets jaunes* protests in France or the contentious ban on diesel cars in inner cities of Germany. Such struggles do not always employ clearly "progressive" or "reactionary" narratives to make sense of this exclusion, or to envision ways out. Rather, they can be interpreted as a collective or individual reaction to an increasingly hypermobile world where seamless movement seems to be possible for everyone – except for oneself (or one's peers). Such exclusions can be traced back to divisions of class, gender, race, (dis)ability, age and geographical location. However, recent insurgencies are hardly only along these lines. An individual or collective ability to move – or more precisely the potential to individually or collectively decide whether, when and how to move or to stay put – is the result of a combination of different privileges and forms of capital that are put into action in various ways in such decision-making. Conversely, many different forms and processes of discrimination, marginalisation, exclusion and invisibility result in the inability to decide over one's movement or in forced or compelled im/mobility.

Despite pointing out above the contentious nature of mobilities on all scales, this volume has a much more modest scope. It does not analyse the flows and frictions of goods and people on a global scale, nor does it deal with access and control to certain spaces as the "right to the city" entails. This volume is largely about the everyday mobility of people, a field that is usually investigated in transport studies. In everyday mobility, underlying structural disadvantages and privileges are often less obvious and visible in comparison to the immediate deficiencies of transport systems. Such underlying structural disadvantages often appear in very subtle and qualitative ways: locally and temporarily, they take effect in different forms that may obfuscate common roots. Hence, in this volume we will investigate forms of structural disadvantage identified in mobility studies and adapt them more thoroughly to analyse the challenges of everyday mobilities. Therefore, we put forward the concept of *mobility poverty.* This investigation will not be – and can never be – detached from an analysis of systemic privilege, both in a historical and contemporary perspective. The recent COVID-19 crisis shows that the relationship between privilege and bodily movement is currently being recalibrated. Those who are usually highly mobile were among the first to stay at home and work remotely. At the same time, they are delegating the work that requires physical movement to the less fortunate workers of the service industry, either those who are self-employed or on short-term contracts. This means that a degree of physical mobility does not alone exhibit privilege and status (any more). In the light of the COVID-19 experience, perhaps whether network capital – as John Urry coined it – still requires co-presence may also be questioned again. It is the decision about whether, when and how to move and not to move that constitutes privilege today. These are the questions that have been investigated under the mobilities paradigm and under the umbrella of the "politics of mobility" (see e.g. Cresswell 2010).

In the last ten years, debates around equity and justice in transport provision and accessibility have become more dynamic in academic as well as policy circles (see e.g. Currie 2010; Delbosc and Currie 2011; Martens 2012; Martens, Di Ciommo, and Papanikolaou 2014; Martens 2017; Pereira, Schwanen, and Banister 2017). Highlighting the need for a broader conceptualisation under the mobilities paradigm, the concept of mobility justice has gained attention recently (Cook and Butz 2018; Sheller 2018; see also Chapter 1 of this volume). Therefore, there is an urgent need to focus on the spatial and social conditions of mobility inequity and injustice. With a fine-grained analysis of the social and spatial conditions, first, we aim to better conceptualise *mobility poverty* beyond *transport poverty.* Second, we aim to bridge the gap between the concept and its real-world application, by highlighting experiences of mobility poverty through case studies from different European regions. Third, we thereby aim to enhance the expertise of decision-makers and practitioners by offering lessons learnt and recommendations.

#### **Understanding the significance of uneven mobilities**

Studying mobilities is not about movements and flows alone. Mimi Sheller summarises the relationship between mobility and immobility very poignantly:

In contrast to […] illusions of clean, quick, ethereal mobility, actual mobilities are full of friction, viscosity, stoppages, and power relations. We need to understand not only what is constituted as mobile, or potentially mobile, and what is not, but also where, when, and how there are resistances to that power, or counter-movements against it. Mobilities are always contingent, contested, and performative. Mobilities are never free but are in various ways always channeled, tracked, controlled, governed, under surveillance and unequal—striated by gender, race, ethnicity, class, caste, color, nationality, age, sexuality, disability, etc., *which are all in fact experienced as effects of uneven mobilities*.

(Sheller 2018, 10, emphasis in original)

Ever since the foundational text of the *new mobilities paradigm* (Hannam, Sheller and Urry 2006), uneven mobilities have been a key topic in mobility studies. Such studies have been heavily influenced by geographers and anthropologists who put forward that the production and creation of spaces, places and communities are processes of establishing links and connections in the form of the movement of bodies, commodities and information. An early influential example is the theory of the social production of space, where Henri Lefebvre points out the significance of networks, flows, connections and linkages in the spatial production process. Space is constituted by networks and it is modified and transformed by networks (Lefebvre 1991, 345–347). When he describes his understanding of spatial practice, he highlights that the relationship between *separation* – e.g. places of residence, work and leisure that are set apart – and *linkages* – e.g. transport infrastructure – is characteristic of the production of space and everyday life, a relationship that is infused with power and hence of a political nature:

[Spatial practice] embodies a close association […] between daily reality (daily routine) – and urban reality (the routes and networks which link up the places set aside for work, 'private life' and leisure). This association is paradoxical, because it induces the most extreme separation between the places it links together. 'Modern' spatial practice might thus be defined by the daily life of a tenant in a government-subsidized

#### 4 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

high-rise housing project. Which could not to be taken to mean that motorways or the politics of air transport can be left out of the picture. (Lefebvre 1991, 38)

Also drawing on a relational understanding of space and place, Doreen Massey highlighted that differentiated mobility is a source of power and control:

Mobility, and control over mobility, both reflects and reinforces power. It is not simply a question of unequal distribution, that some people move more than others, and that some have more control than others. It is that the mobility and control of some groups can actively weaken other people. Differential mobility can weaken the leverage of the already weak. The time-space compression of some groups can undermine the power of others.

(Massey 1994, 150)

Especially in the phase of global economic restructuring after 1990, the analysis of networks, flows and linkages – and their disruptions, exclusions and disconnections respectively – became central to understanding the differentiated and unequal outcomes of globalisation. Manuel Castells famously identified two different logics: the *space of flows* – means that the "material arrangements allow simultaneity of social practices without territorial contiguity" – and the *space of place* – understood as a "locale whose form, function, and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of territorial contiguity" (Castells 1999, 295–296). He argued that:

[…] [T]he constitution of the space of flows [is] in itself a form of domination, since the space of flows, even in its diversity, is interrelated and can escape the control of any locale, while the space of places is fragmented, localized, and thus increasingly powerless vis a vis the versatility of the space of flows. The only chance of resistance for localities is to refuse landing rights for overwhelming flows – only to see that they land in the locale nearby, therefore inducing the bypassing and marginalization of rebellious communities.

(Castells 1999, 297)

Anthropology and geography fertilised each other by highlighting the importance of im/mobilities for a relational understanding of place and community. Considering spatial hierarchies and spatial (dis)connections in social and cultural analysis opened up rich pathways for a better understanding of cultures and societies, an understanding that is sensitive to the questions of power and hegemony. Gupta and Ferguson pointed out: "If one begins with the premise that spaces have always been hierarchically interconnected, instead of naturally disconnected, then cultural and social change becomes not a matter of cultural contact and articulation but one of rethinking difference through connection" (Gupta and Ferguson 1992, 8).

Im/mobilities and disconnections have also been the focus of attention of those who recognised the differentiated effects of infrastructures. Acknowledging the channelling effects of infrastructures, it becomes clear that elements that are physically close are not necessarily connected to each other, while, conversely, elements that are physically distant can indeed be connected. To illustrate this point, Bruno Latour states: "an Alaskan reindeer might be ten meters away from another one and they might be nevertheless cut off by a pipeline of 800 miles that make their mating for ever impossible" (Latour 1996, 372). Also Susan Leigh Star argues that the notion of universally accessible infrastructure is blurred "when one begins to investigate large-scale technical systems in the making, or to examine the situations of those who are not served by a particular infrastructure. […] One person's infrastructure is another's topic, or difficulty" (Star 1999, 380).

This brief (and incomplete) overview illustrates that investigating the role of im/mobilities and movements and their unequal social consequences has been a topic of many research disciplines for quite a while even before the turn of mobilities. However, before John Urry's *Sociology Beyond Societies* and Zygmunt Bauman's *Liquid Modernity*, mobilities themselves were rarely considered a key epistemological concept in themselves, or as Mimi Sheller puts it, the achievement of the new mobilities paradigm is

their radical emphasis on *complex mobilities* of all kinds as the ontological basis for all forms of relational space, and partly their deeper cultural analysis of how these political economic relational spaces were produced in and through social and cultural practices.

(Sheller 2018, 11–12, emphasis in original)

#### **Transport poverty and social exclusion**

Partially in parallel with, but also in contrast to, advances in social sciences around the new mobilities paradigm, academics in transportation research investigate disadvantages regarding access to transport options and problems in accessibility to locations and opportunities (Figure 0.1). This body of work is often subsumed under the term "transport poverty". Such works have made a substantial contribution by highlighting the reinforcing circle of transport disadvantage, social disadvantage and social exclusion.

Unlike the case of mobilities, the debate around transport poverty was not initially sparked by conceptual and theoretical considerations. Rather, it was fuelled by the necessity for policy-makers and practitioners to deal with the processes of social exclusion, in the light of widening social inequalities in European societies.

*Figure 0.1* Transport poverty. Source: Authors, based on Lucas et al. 2016.

Transport disadvantage first received closer attention when the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) was implemented in the United Kingdom in 1997 as part of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, providing strategic advice and policy analysis to the UK government. One explicit focus of the SEU was the role of transport and mobility in processes of social exclusion. In its 2003 report, the SEU pointed out that access to transport options – both individual modes of transport and public transport – may be the result of social exclusion and that inadequate transport availability and accessibility of basic services can reinforce social exclusion (Social Exclusion Unit 2003, 1). It highlighted that social disadvantage and unequal access to transport options can result in a downward spiral that traps individuals, households and social groups in a state of immobility (irrespective of living in urban, peri-urban and rural areas). The report highlighted the inter-linkages between social, spatial and transportrelated disadvantage as one of the main factors of social exclusion. Another achievement of the study was that it successfully directed attention to the needs of individuals from vulnerable social groups as well as urban and rural spaces characterised by deprivation and neglect (Church, Frost, and Sullivan 2000; Lucas, Grosvenor, and Simpson 2001; Kenyon, Lyons, and Rafferty 2002). The 2003 report was thus a turning point in the awareness of transport-related disadvantage, generating a growing policy and academic interest in transport-related social exclusion. Today, it is acknowledged that approaches to understanding transport disadvantage and social exclusion must depart from an observation of general poverty towards a contextual understanding of an individual's position within society (Lucas 2012, 106).

The term transport poverty first appeared when it was emphasised in social exclusion literature (Lucas 2004, 1) and became further prominent when it was utilised as a campaigning instrument to shed light on the affordability of car ownership, public transport costs and lack of access to transport (Sustrans 2012). The term has subsequently been used to conceptually clarify the inter-linkages between transport-related disadvantage, social disadvantage, (in)accessibility and social exclusion (Lucas 2012, 107; Titheridge et al. 2014, 19–22).

As described above, transport poverty was initially investigated – to a larger extent – in the context of the debate on social exclusion, equality of access to opportunities and transport justice. In 2012, Karen Lucas made an influential attempt to locate transport poverty at the intersection of transport disadvantage and social disadvantage, the consequences leading to inaccessibility and social exclusion:

Transport disadvantage and social disadvantage interact directly and indirectly to cause transport poverty. This in turn leads to inaccessibility to essential goods and services, as well as 'lock-out' from planning and decision-making processes, which can result in social exclusion outcomes and further social and transport inequalities will then ensue. (Lucas 2012, 106)

This statement explains the circular dynamic of production and reinforcement of the experience of disadvantage and social exclusion. This also makes clear that social/transport-related disadvantage and social exclusion are not in a simple causal relationship nor are they synonymous. As Currie and Delbosc point out, when transport disadvantage is explored across high-mobile and low-mobile groups, disadvantage is subjectively estimated very differently (Currie and Delbosc 2010).

The term transport poverty has been continuously employed in more recent years (Velaga et al. 2012, 110; Martens 2013, 24) and is often used interchangeably with other terms, such as 'accessibility poverty' or 'poverty of access' (Farrington and Farrington 2005, 3; Martens and Bastiaanssen 2014, 6–7), 'transport disadvantage' (e.g. Currie et al. 2009, 97–98), 'transportrelated' or 'transport-based social exclusion' (e.g. Preston and Rajé 2007, 152–154; Schwanen et al. 2015, 123–125), 'social equity', 'fairness' and 'justice in transport' (e.g. Martens 2009, 4–6; Jones and Lucas 2012, 9; Sheller 2015, 86) and 'transport wealth' (Stokes and Lucas 2011, 4–7). Although these terminologies and the related concepts are defined differently, they also have substantial overlaps and are sometimes based on similar approaches and assumptions. In other words, transport poverty can be approached from different, however, interrelated perspectives (Lucas et al. 2016, 2–4).

In terms of perspectives, transport poverty can be approached from the perspective of *transport affordability*. The term refers to the "financial burden households bear in purchasing transportation services, particularly those required to access basic goods and activities such as healthcare, shopping, school, work and social activities" (Litman 2016, 5). This discourse is largely relevant for industrialised countries, as it centres on ownership of a car as a basic household need. Focusing on affordability to define transport poverty, Gleeson and Randolph (2002, 102) state that "transport poverty occurs when a household is forced to consume more travel costs than it can reasonably afford, especially costs relating to motor car ownership and usage". Several authors have pointed out that forced car ownership1 is a form of transport poverty that has been identified in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia (e.g. Currie and Senbergs 2007, 2–3).

Another strand of research on transport poverty focuses on accessibility and *accessibility poverty*. Accessibility considers whether people can reach "key services at reasonable cost, in reasonable time and with reasonable ease" (Social Exclusion Unit 2003, 1) – key services primarily being employment, education, health care and daily supply. Accordingly, Martens and Bastiaanssen (2014, 5) define accessibility poverty in the following way: "Accessibility poverty refers to a situation of low accessibility that severely restricts a person's ability to participate in the activities deemed normal in a particular society".

The concept of transport poverty has been criticised from various angles. Firstly, academic debate still lacks an accurate description of the phenomenon of transport poverty and discussion often focuses on how transport poverty differs from poverty itself and who is affected. Due to many open questions, instruments to measure transport poverty are not sufficiently developed, let alone efficient and effective measures to tackle transport poverty. So far, transport poverty has not been taken up by policy-makers as a stand-alone issue that needs to be addressed. Overall, "transport poverty is an extremely under-explored and poorly articulated problem even within developed countries" (Lucas et al. 2016, 10).

Secondly, transport poverty is often discussed in the context of the endeavour to build inclusive societies. However, how exactly and to what degree transport and mobility-related disadvantages contribute to social exclusion, reduced opportunities and well-being are still insufficiently explored. Such insufficient knowledge can be partially traced back to the weaknesses of the social inclusion/exclusion concept. The concept often lacks clarity with the result that "social inclusion is conceived in many alternative ways, depending upon ideology" (Silver 2015, 3–4). Due to the wide use of the term often without a substantial analytical framework, Kasper et al. (2017, 7) conclude that social inclusion has become one of the many aspirational terms that "tend to lose any precision to their meaning, and come to be good by definition rather than by implication." It is also pointed out that the aim of social inclusion itself can be contested. Schwanen et al. (2015) in an important contribution remind us that social capital (in Pierre Bourdieu's understanding of social capital) has both inclusionary and exclusionary effects. Hence, they argue that "fully appreciating the Janus-faced character […] helps us understand the dynamics in the interactions between mobility and social exclusion because it both is a medium for social change and can reinforce existing inequalities." Hilary Silver goes a step further when she highlights that the idea of social inclusion is infused with power: "Paradoxically, recognizing and assisting an excluded group in the name of inclusion may simultaneously stigmatize, label, or include them in ways they did not choose […]. Inclusion sounds good – but on whose terms?" (Silver 2015, 22).

 In this sense, it is important to keep in mind that social exclusion is a multi-layered problem that has many causes other than transport-related disadvantages (Currie and Delbosc 2010, 964). Furthermore, as others have also argued, transport disadvantage and transport-related social exclusion are not synonymous with each other: it is possible to be socially excluded but still have good access to transport or to be transport disadvantaged but highly socially included (Currie and Delbosc 2010; Lucas 2012).

#### **Towards mobility poverty**

The new mobilities paradigm emphasises mobilities over transportation and clarifies the differences between the two. However, the terms "mobility poverty" and "transport poverty" are sometimes used interchangeably. Unlike the international literature on the topic, the German academic debate more often explicitly differentiates between mobility poverty (*Mobilitätsarmut*) und transport poverty (*Vekehrsarmut*) (Dangschat 2011; Daubitz 2016; Stark 2017; Schwedes et al. 2018). Schwedes et al. (2018, 79) stress the point that it is not only the spatial delimitations that influence mobility behaviour, but also the "mental horizon" and the capacity to plan and shape one's own life. Mobility is therefore also mental flexibility and agility and the created personal sphere is one's "space of opportunity". These arguments, very much related to Vincent Kaufmann's concept of motility (Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004), call for an analysis of "mobility poverty" and not "transport poverty". According to Schwedes et al. (2018), transport poverty focuses too much on the availability of transport options and that, even in the most sophisticated and well-grounded works, the topic is mainly accessed from the perspective of transport provision.

Furthermore, it can be observed that in transport poverty literature, different phenomena of social disadvantage have been explored with unequal attention; while there is substantial empirical evidence on the link between material poverty and transport disadvantage, there is less knowledge about the role of other socio-demographic features that are experienced as disadvantage. This includes gender, disability, old age and young age. There is far less attention on the discrimination that ethnic minorities, migrants and refugees face while being mobile and accessing transport (see e.g. Rajé 2017).

Finally, despite significant progress, the relationship between spatial and temporal organisation in daily life and experienced disadvantage is still insufficiently explored under the umbrella of transport poverty. The challenge of assessing this topic is related to the *relational nature of high mobility and low mobility*: increasing overall mobility levels – and instances of high mobility in certain sections of society – may have the consequence of reduced

#### 10 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

mobility and accessibility of those already less mobile in societies. Consequently, "what is necessary for full 'social' inclusion varies as the means and modes of mobility change and as the potential for 'access' develops" (Cass, Shove, and Urry 2005, 542). The highly contextual and relational nature of mobility disadvantage needs further exploration.

Hence, we turn towards examining *mobility poverty*. Mobility poverty focuses on barriers to people's ability and potential to move. Unlike the accessibility perspective that aims foremost at examining basic needs, mobility poverty takes into perspective the effects of hypermobility and the development of highly mobile societies. In such a context, due to the power relations involved, especially vulnerable groups experience reduced mobility options and accessibility levels (Massey 1994, 150; Kenyon, Lyons and Rafferty 2002, 210; Cass, Shove and Urry 2005, 542; Hannam, Sheller and Urry 2006, 3). Mobility perspectives take factors at micro-, meso- and macro-level into account, such as status, wealth, prestige and power, and highlight that mobility is fundamentally linked to social, cultural, economic and political processes. Key to the approach is the identification of the *systemic* lack of transportation and mobility options and the *relational* nature of transport problems. This mobility framing is not only sensitive to questions of access, but also to the skills and capabilities of individuals as well as to personal ambitions and differentiated needs. By understanding mobility needs as socially constructed, it explores the gap between unrealised mobility needs and actual travel patterns. The key concept to such an in-depth appraisal of differentiated mobilities is the *motility* approach by Vincent Kaufmann that will be presented in Chapter 1 (Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004; Flamm and Kaufmann 2006).

Similarly, John Urry directed our attention to the dynamic, ever- changing and complex prerequisites for a meaningful social life. Turning away from the "formal" aspects that are addressed in the accessibility perspective – employment, education, health – to the social relationships of everyday life, he points out that it is actually the link between social relationships and mobility that creates new inequalities. These inequalities imply additional rewards (also in material terms) for some, and new burdens for others. He therefore developed the concept of network capital,

the capacity to engender and sustain social relations with those people [who] are not necessarily proximate and which generates emotional, financial and practical benefit […]. Network capital […] produce[s] a distinct stratification order that now sits alongside social class, social status and party.

(Urry 2007, 197)

Such elaborated analyses of mobility disadvantage pose a considerable challenge for investigating the phenomena both on a representative and comparable scale, posing a problem for national and local policy-makers as to how to adequately address the issue.

As one of the first, Lucas et al. (2016) have explicitly outlined *mobility poverty* as one form of how transport poverty can be experienced. Understanding mobility poverty as a sub-phenomenon of transport poverty is reasonable, since the term transport poverty effectively separates the topic of everyday and regular corporeal movement in space from other forms of movement such as migration, which are not the direct focus of transportation researchers.

Similar to Karen Lucas' area of research, this publication also focuses mostly on everyday travel. *However, we propose that transport poverty should rather be understood as one of many forms of how mobility poverty can be experienced*. This shift in analysing mobility-related disadvantages puts mobilities in the context of many other processes and dynamics. Although the international transport debate has made considerable progress in integrating aspects of mobility poverty into the debate of transport poverty, transport academics often hesitate to make explicit the systemic unevenness of mobilities and spaces. This unevenness is however central to a holistic understanding of all kinds of mobilities, as Sheller (2018) highlights. We believe that the consideration of unevenness of mobilities should also inform a more profound analysis of everyday and regular corporeal movement, which is the objective of this volume. Following this understanding, in this volume we consciously make the shift from *transport poverty* to *mobility poverty*.

Mobility poverty is a phenomenon that can appear anywhere and at any point in time. Indeed, mobility poverty – as will be shown – is highly relational and contextual. It is by no means synonymous with material poverty. Although mobility poverty is often linked to material poverty – and other forms of mobility disadvantages may be reinforced by material poverty – mobility poverty can appear in personal conditions of wealth or in economically dynamic regions. Forms of mobility can be most disruptive and, at the same time, the least visible under exactly such circumstances. The following chapters, and especially the experiences from the field (Part IV), will further illuminate this proposition.

Even after making this shift to mobility poverty, the joint objective must be the development of effective and applicable solutions, despite differentiated mobility needs in a complex world. In an ever more complex and growing field, there are many barriers that prevent policy-makers and practitioners from taking positive action because it is difficult to identify the right level and scale of intervention. The actual points of intervention that allow the multidimensional, interrelated and always context-specific challenges to be tackled in efficient and effective ways have not yet been precisely identified. This volume aims to fill this gap.

#### **Selection of the fieldwork study regions and targeted vulnerable groups**

The selection of study regions was result of an in-depth analysis of geographical, socio-economic and other negative factors (i.e. deprived, dispersed or

#### 12 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

rural peripheral), transport and accessibility problems and running experiences and initiatives. Thereby, it was not only the aim to identify the most deprived or marginalised regions in Europe, or those with lowest accessibility, but rather to **identify a set of case study regions that present a variety of different spatial, social and mobility characteristics that occur in Europe**  (Figure 0.2; Table 0.1).

Furthermore, the selection process considered that mobility disadvantage is a multifaceted phenomenon appearing in both beneficial and disadvantaged socio-economic environments. It was taken into account that it is possible that on the very micro-level individuals subjectively experience a form of mobility disadvantage and subsequent social exclusion even with high socio-economic status. Also, it was assumed that perception of disadvantage and marginalisation can even be stronger in dynamic and prosperous regions characterised by high mobility levels. Hence, the selection process followed the understanding that socio-economic disadvantage (most importantly absolute/relative poverty) is only one of the indicators for mobility poverty. Consequently, mobility poverty on the micro-level was also analysed in comparatively better-off regions.

Through such a variety, it is possible to relate – cautiously – to similar cases and situations in other parts of Europe, and by theoretical inference draw general conclusions while being sensitive to the local context. Thus, while the case studies do not claim representativeness for the respective countries, the particular European region or the European Union as a whole, the study methodology nevertheless allows developing a better picture of mobility poverty in Europe.

*Figure 0.2* Fieldwork study regions. Source: HiReach Project.

*Table 0.1* F ieldwork study regions with spatial layers and vulnerable groups addressed

Source: HiReach Project.

Study regions have been assessed according to the following criteria:

	- Low income and unemployed people
	- Elderly people
	- People with reduced mobility
	- Women
	- Migrants and ethnic minorities
	- Children and young people
	- People living in remote, rural or deprived urban areas.

#### 14 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

#### **Fieldwork methodology**

During desk research on mobility poverty, knowledge gaps and additional topics were identified that were taken up and explored more deeply during the fieldwork phase. Furthermore, findings from desk research needed to be verified and contextualised in the field. Hence, six study regions were identified at the beginning of the HiReach project, as outlined above. In these study regions, research with experts and members of different social groups was conducted, in order to arrive at an in-depth understanding of mobility and accessibility problems experienced in different countries at urban, peri-urban and rural level. The fieldwork methodology relied on interviews with experts and on focus group discussions with members of different social groups and stakeholders.

In a first step, in each study region, **interviews were conducted with representatives of local authorities, transport operators, non-governmental organisations and interest groups** (e.g. representing persons with disabilities, unemployed persons, children, elderly, migrants, women and other vulnerable to exclusion citizens). These interviews had the objective to identify social as well as mobility-related disadvantages in each local study region.

The second step was the conduction of **focus group sessions with members of social groups**, to further validate and explore their mobility and accessibility challenges. The focus group sessions took place in two rounds, in summer to autumn 2018 and summer 2019. The first round in 2018 focussed on identifying challenges and problems with personal mobility. In 2018, two focus groups sessions per targeted social group in each of the study regions were conducted, which means four focus group sessions per study region. The second round in 2019 aimed at identifying and developing solutions. Two focus group sessions in each study region were conducted in 2019. In many cases, the second round of focus group was conducted in the same municipality, in collaboration with the same local organisation. Also, in some cases, participants from the 2018 sessions joined again in 2019, which was ideal to discuss a possible pathway from identifying challenges to preparing solutions.

In each focus group session, between 6 and 12 persons participated. A gender balance was aimed at in these sessions, however not always achieved. In some cases, it was deemed beneficial to conduct separated sessions for men and women, in order to be able to identify needs of women more thoroughly. This was, for example, the case for the focus group sessions with refugees in Esslingen/Germany. The focus group sessions allowed us to discuss the previously identified problems from different, sometimes surprising perspectives with the participants. Apart from verifying existing knowledge, new issues were raised or linkages to other aspects of everyday life were drawn that the researchers did not imagine earlier.

The focus groups were conducted in close collaboration with local NGOs, authorities and advocacy groups. Participants were recruited via the channels of these organisations. Participation in the focus group session was incentivised by shopping vouchers, and all expenses for transport were refunded to the participants. Child care was provided for children of participants where necessary.

Research activities with members of different social groups were conducted according to the European and national legislation in force concerning research ethics and vulnerable groups of citizens and the requirements for informed consent. Special attention had to be given to preventing the risk of enhancing vulnerability and stigmatisation of individuals, especially for the most vulnerable groups. In this respect, involvement of children, migrants and refugees had to be treated with utmost caution. An ethics board supervised data collection, focus group methodology and involvement of the target groups.

#### **Structure of the volume**

This book is divided into four parts, organised around four thematic areas:

Part I focuses on social skills and individual aptitudes on the one hand and mobility justice on the other. This part devotes three chapters to the social arrangement of mobility, switching between the social and individual levels. Chapter 1 is devoted to "Learning Mobility" while Chapter 2 deals with "Unequal mobilities, network capital and mobility justice". Chapter 3 ends this section by dealing with "The impact of life events on travel behaviour".

Part II deals with spatial elements of mobility poverty. Chapter 4 ("The spatial dimension of mobility poverty") offers initial insights into spatial systems in Europe and their effects on mobility disadvantage, while Chapter 5 addresses "The urban arena" and Chapter 6 "the rural arena". Together, the three chapters aim to define the characteristics of the urban, peri-urban and rural areas and how spatial contexts shape mobility poverty.

Part III tackles the societal roots and impacts of mobility poverty. The social component of mobility poverty is addressed analysing, for each of the six chapters forming this part, different vulnerable groups, for example: Chapter 7, "Women and gender-related aspects"; Chapter 8, "People on low income and unemployed persons"; Chapter 9, "Impacts on mobility in an ageing Europe"; Chapter 10, "The predicaments of European disabled people"; Chapter 11, "Migrants, ethnic minorities and mobility poverty"; and Chapter 12, "Children and young people".

#### 16 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

Part IV covers the results of the theoretical enquiry to the field. In this final part, the investigation of six case studies as carried out in Portugal (Chapter 13), Italy (Chapter 14), Greece (Chapter 15), Romania (Chapter 16), Germany (Chapter 17) and Luxembourg (Chapter 18) is offered to the reader, including the outcomes of the focus groups and users' engagement. The conclusion ends this volume.

This book has been made possible by the continuous engagement of many people. First of all, we should mention the many authors of the chapters, but also those working on the Horizon 2020 project HiReach, on which this book is based. We are also very grateful to the HiReach advisory committee of practitioners ("Take-up-Group"), which accompanied the project, and, naturally, to those stakeholders who supported the project who have been instrumental in enabling us to conduct the fieldwork. The engagement of local actors, the voices of the users, made it possible to test and calibrate our project and its results. We think that this book should be dedicated to those who encounter problems in their everyday mobility.

#### **Note**

 1 The low income of households, the need for travel in everyday life and the lack of alternatives to the car in the form of public transport are central to the concept of forced car ownership. In such a context, expenditure on a car is seen as essential and unavoidable in the household concerned. Hence, there is an incidence of high car ownership, but at high cost to low income groups (see Currie and Senbergs 2007, 2).

#### **References**

*Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice* 74: 123–135. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.tra.2015.02.012.

Urry, John. 2007. *Mobilities*. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Velaga, Nagendra R., Mark Beecroft, John D. Nelson, David Corsar, and Peter Edwards. 2012. "Transport poverty meets the digital divide: Accessibility and connectivity in rural communities." In *Journal of Transport Geography* 21: 102–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2011.12.005.

# **Part I Social skills and individual aptitudes**

### **1 Learning mobility**

*Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

#### **Abstract**

In this chapter, we take a social constructivist approach to mobility poverty. We argue that, for an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon, it is crucial to investigate the contentious relationship of *mobilities* and *immobilities*. Whether, when and how people decide to move, or to stay immobile, is a complex process. In this chapter, we highlight the aspect of *learning* how to be mobile and at the same time point to the factors that limit the learning process. With such an approach, we lay the groundwork for a better understanding of unmet mobility needs along with the interrelation between realised and unrealised mobilities.

#### **Introduction: realised and unrealised mobility – a social constructivist approach**

This and the following chapter seek to depart from a classical account of transport disadvantage focusing on material poverty in order to arrive at a more complex understanding of inequality, disadvantage and injustice, which we subsume under the concept of *mobility poverty*. This considers the increasing variability of lifestyles, attitudes, opinions and values, how they play out on a micro-societal level as well as within the same social stratum, ultimately how this constellation of factors affects people's mobility. We argue that mobility poverty is not only about a lack or shortage of actual movement. It is about the conditions that presuppose actual realised movement such as individual factors that create a desire, motivation and need to be mobile. Furthermore, mobility poverty is not only about differentiated mobility but also about the liberty to move or not move, or the decision to be mobile or stay immobile.

In this vein, the arguments presented here will allow us to (i) better understand the *conjunction between mobility and immobility* and (ii) to identify the *gap between realised and unrealised mobility,* which leads to an investigation of *unmet mobility needs*.

What exactly is our aim by highlighting the gap between realised and unrealised mobility? This is not immediately self-evident, but, for some social groups, this gap is more apparent and can be identified more easily. For example, this gap can be immediately grasped when studying the mobility of the elderly: both anecdotic evidence and research indicate that there are lower levels of mobility activity than people actually desire. Mostly, mobility is desired to foster social relationships and conduct leisure activities, but also to maintain social reputation and access social resources (Hjorthol 2013, 1194). This desire increases with age. It could also be shown that, with increasing age, meeting basic needs like shopping receive wider significance for a person's well-being. For example, this boils down to personal assurance to be independent and in control of one's life, the possibility to meet friends, or just the positive feeling of being out of the house, "on the road" or among people (Hjorthol 2013, 1203–1206). Conversely, the desire for mobility among the elderly often remains unrealised due to inadequate transport options, limited financial means and physical constraints. In addition, often elderly people are reluctant to rely on support from friends and relatives to meet their mobility demands due to internalised norms of self-reliance and independence, hence mobility remains unrealised (Schwanen, Banister, and Bowling 2012, 1320; Ziegler and Schwanen 2011, 777).

In many other cases, the exploration of this mobility gap poses a challenge, which is also eventually a methodological challenge. Research on mobility requirements often relies on the observation of travel that actually takes place. Traditionally with quantitative methods, and increasingly with qualitative or mixed-method approaches, travel behaviour and travel patterns are explored through surveys, travel diaries, GPS tracking, focus groups and in-depth interviews. Although such studies deliver important results on mobility behaviour and patterns and provide a strong basis for transport modelling and demand forecasting, the deeper-lying norms and attitudes of individuals towards their spatial movement often remain hidden. While many studies differentiate between various trip purposes, they do not explore the more fine-grained motivations for being mobile or immobile in one or another way, and thus miss blocked desires (Nordbakke and Schwanen 2015, 1130–1131; Pereira, Schwanen, and Banister 2017, 177).

The definition and identification of mobility desires and unrealised mobility needs could potentially have a strong impact on policy formulation. The way in which mobility needs are defined depends on who participates in the political or agenda setting process. A participative and inclusive process is crucial for the policies and solutions developed. This means that those who do not have access to political decision-making – or are not adequately represented – may not have the chance to express their mobility needs. Especially in the case of socially disadvantaged groups, new policies or solutions often do not address those specific needs or, worse, policies can even further hamper the ability to participate in social life (see e.g. Lucas 2006, 806; Rajé 2007, 66).

In order to analyse the gap between realised and unrealised mobility, and identify unmet mobility needs, we take a social constructivist approach*.*

Indeed, individual motivations and needs to be im/mobile are socially constructed: the "desire" or "necessity" to move is highly discretional according to social and cultural context. What seems indispensable to one person may be mundane to another. The motivation to move, as well as the ability to move, is closely linked to social norms, values, experiences and socially embedded expectations.

When analysing the gap between realised and unrealised mobility, it becomes necessary to differentiate *individual mobility needs and aptitudes* on the one hand and the notion of *unequal mobilities* and *mobility justice* on the other hand, keeping in mind that for us this goes beyond debates about the distribution of accessibility levels. While these are by no means mutually exclusive approaches, different strands of investigation put varying emphasis on each of them, resulting in different conclusions about what is necessary to achieve what is called a "good" and meaningful life, and subsequent recommendation for policy and technological solutions.

In this chapter, we begin with scrutinising how individual mobility motivations, needs and desires are developed in a setting of established social and cultural norms, values, experiences and socially embedded expectations. While navigating social and cultural settings, *mobility is learnt by individuals in a complex and long-lasting process.* In this learning process, individual mobility aptitudes and skills are established, which enable individuals in their decisions of whether to move or not in quite different ways.

In order to analyse these concepts, we scrutinise:

Fourth, the process of obtaining travel know-how and spatial knowledge will be elaborated.

Lastly, the gap between realised and unrealised mobility will be illustrated by the example of virtual mobilities.

### **Mobilities and social networks**

Especially for groups that are considered vulnerable, the primary attention of decision makers and practitioners is often on securing the basic and formal needs of everyday life: employment, education, health care. However, such a model

rests on a definition of what excluded people should want or need and obscures the role that social networks play in maintaining a 'good life' and in structuring the meaning of inclusion and participation. […] This is difficult to achieve, but one method is to focus upon 'blocked desire', especially when people cannot meet what they take to be important obligations of co-presence.

(Cass, Shove, and Urry 2005, 551)

Hence, the importance of maintaining social networks for vulnerable social groups and the associated necessities to be mobile need further scrutiny.

The role of social networks for maintaining a "good life" and the associated need for mobility has been widely discussed. John Urry and other scholars (Urry 2007; Urry and Grieco 2011) have described in detail the significance and even primacy of social relations for maintaining a meaningful life in a networked society:

What seems important in contemporary life are overlapping and intersecting social networks – in leisure, friendship, family life as well as in work and organizations. And these networks appear to demand intermittent travel, such travel being crucial to forming and sustaining such networks produced through 'moments of co-presence'.

(Cass, Shove, and Urry 2005, 545)

This leads us to conceive that social relations for some groups – especially elderly and mobility-impaired people in rural areas with inadequate public transport – are a prerequisite for being mobile, while mobility of these individuals again reinforces the ability for co-presence and hence the stability of social ties (Jansuwan, Christensen, and Chen 2013 for low-income groups; Lovejoy and Handy 2011 for migrants in the United States; Pyer and Tucker 2014 for young people with disability; Rajé 2007 for poor elderly people; Rittner and Kirk 1995). It has also been shown that different socially constructed needs can be in conflict with each other: many older people are reluctant to rely on support from friends and relatives to meet their mobility demands due to internalised norms of self-reliance and independence, with the effect that especially the elderly tend not to participate in social and cultural life if they would need assistance with transportation from friends and relatives (or technical devices) (Schwanen, Banister, and Bowling 2012, 1320; Ziegler and Schwanen 2011, 777). The same attitudes have also been described for members of immigrant communities in the United States (Lovejoy and Handy 2011, 255).

However, it is important to understand both the inclusionary *and* exclusionary effects of social networks, and that the networked society is a society of inclusions and exclusions at the same time. The exclusionary effects of social networks and the resulting mobility disadvantage will be more thoroughly investigated in Chapter 2.

#### **Motility as a key element: individual capabilities and preferences**

In order to identify unrealised mobility needs and estimate the gap between actual travel and latent mobility needs, the concept of *motility* can be employed (Figure 1.1). "Motility can be defined as how an individual or group

*Figure 1.1* The motility approach.

Source: Authors, adapted from De Witte and Macharis (2010), based on Flamm and Kaufmann 2006; Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004.

takes possession of the realm of possibilities for mobility and builds on it to develop personal projects" (Flamm and Kaufmann 2006, 168). Furthermore, motility can be described "as the way in which entities [persons] access and appropriate the capacity for socio-spatial mobility according to their circumstances" (Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004, 750).

Motility hence analyses the *potential* of and *capacity* for movement. The study of potential movement reveals further insights into people's mobility as well as into its wider spatial and social consequences (Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004, 749). The motility approach allows us to grasp a better understanding of the *contextuality* of mobility challenges. It also allows us to analyse and explain how increased travel options do not result in more freedom and mobility for all; this lets us understand that individuals use these options in different ways. In other words, the motility approach provides a useful concept to analyse mobility poverty empirically.

Kaufmann and his team identified three interrelated groups of factors that define the potential to be mobile:

#### 28 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

circumstances; acquired skills that relate to the rules and regulations of movement (e.g. driving licence and parking permits); and organisational skills to plan and coordinate activities, including the acquisition of information and the above mentioned required abilities and skills.

• **Cognitive appropriation**: This describes the personal evaluation of available mobility options in relation to personal aspirations, plans and projects and acquired skills. This aspect most importantly considers *how* and *why* people make mobility decisions – how people consider certain options, deem them more or less appropriate for themselves and ultimately select specific options. It also considers how people evaluate their own skills and decisions. How and why people make use of available options (or not) has to do with personal needs, projects, personal aspirations, plans and so on. These needs and aspirations are interrelated with prior experiences, personal values, norms, habits, attitudes and strategies (Flamm and Kaufmann 2006, 169; Kaufmann 2011, 41–44; Kaufmann, Bergman, and Joye 2004, 750).

In studying mobility needs with the motility approach, it is possible to identify the deeper-lying elements that influence mobility or immobility behaviour, originating from various parameters. With the increasing disappearance of generally accepted organising principles and the heterogeneity of norms and values in recent times of transformation, it is important to consider how people make sense of this heterogeneity and put it into mobility practice.

Scholars in the field of mobility and transport have subsequently widened their analysis of mobility needs and patterns by including the *potential* for movement. Cresswell and Uteng for example point out that "by mobility we mean not only geographic movement but also the potential for undertaking movements (motility) as it is lived and experienced – movement and motility plus meaning plus power" (Cresswell and Uteng 2008, 2). Canzler, Kaufmann and Kesselring define mobility

as a *change* of condition by targeting three dimensions: movements, networks and motility. […] Movements refer to strictly a geographic dimension. […] Networks can be defined as the framework of movements; [they] delineate the field of conceptualized possibilities. […] Motility is how an individual or groups endorses the field of movement possibilities and uses them.

> (Canzler, Kaufmann, and Kesselring 2008, 2–3, emphasis in original)

#### **The role of socialisation**

Socialisation is one of the important formative processes that shape people's attitudes and behaviours. How individuals are integrated in society over different stages of their lives influences individuals' learning experience and formation of social roles. Personal experiences and social norms are internalised and developed into personal norms that ultimately guide behaviour. Factors typically significant for socialisation are family members, especially parents, friends, peers, colleagues, but also institutions such as schools and the media. Socialisation can be defined as "the adoption of a group's (typical) behaviours, opinions and values by an individual so that thus an individual capable of social acting emerges" (Tully and Baier 2011, 195; cited in Scheiner 2017, 392).

Socialisation is naturally also a key factor in shaping individuals' mobility needs and routines. Such processes influence the travel mode choices of people and impact on how they adapt their mobility behaviour to changing external circumstances. Research on socialisation shows that mobility behaviour is impacted at an early age by primary socialisation relating to parental and family mobility and secondary socialisation in later life by mobility education in school, by mobility behaviour of peers and cliques in adolescence and by partners (see e.g. Kroesen 2015, 492–493, 501–502). Hence, *socialisation processes are most formative in childhood and adolescence, but they are not limited to this.*

Moving to our field of analysis, travel behaviour can change over the whole life course, although changes are slower in later life (Scheiner 2017, 393). Focusing on automobility, studies show that "pro car" attitudes in car-owning households are transferred to the children, who themselves develop positive attitudes towards cars (on this issue, see also Chapter 9 of this volume). Other research suggests that the media reinforces a desire for car ownership and usage as children embrace knowledge of and desire for particular types of cars and their associated lifestyles, though the media is not the main or sole cause of how children's travel attitudes and choices develop (Baslington 2008, 109). For teenagers, having access to different mobility options is crucial for independence from family support. Thus, having experienced and being familiar with different forms of transport can enlarge the activity space and help foster social relationships (Tully and Baier 2011, 195–198).

Conversely, reduced or highly limited exposure to transport facilities creates barriers to access those mobility systems and thus leads to reduced mobility in young age (and later to lower perceived transport needs). This environment drives constraints in mobility, which can significantly impede access to education, job opportunities, leisure and social opportunities. On a different angle, *travel patterns are characterised by routines and habits* and this can lead to transport mode "decisions" *which may NOT follow "rational" choice and decision-making for the best available option*. This seems trivial, but too often it is not part of a policy maker's mindset.

We can thus state that observed travel behaviour and travel patterns can differ from the real travel needs of people. Early socialisation with cars can contribute to forced car ownership because other available options that are cheaper may be out of sight for individuals.

#### 30 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

In a wider view, every travel behaviour is the outcome of a long process of socialisation. Also, travel needs are – actually – an outcome of how we define ourselves in the large social frame and our ability to use transport systems. Our capacity to drive a car, to know which bus to use or to manage a ride on a train are part of our travel choice and limitation.

If we tackle mobility under this angle, we therefore need to understand how we develop our mobility needs and how we are exposed and socialised to transport systems.

#### **Travel know-how and spatial knowledge**

Flamm and Kaufmann (2006, 175–176) point out that, in order to use and master means of transportation, it is crucial to acquire driving and riding know-how for any type of vehicle. Reaching a certain level of know-how is a process of accumulating experience that requires a medium- to long-term learning process. Without mastering means of transportation, individual mobility is severely restricted or impeded.

This may be obvious and most important for individual forms of transport such as car-driving and bicycle usage. Studies show that young car drivers need at least 3,000 kilometres to gain minimal experience of driving an automobile (Pervanchon 1999, 22–24, 83, in Flamm and Kaufmann 2006, 175). However, also the use of collective modes of transport demand experience and sometimes a good understanding and know-how of a certain transport regime so as to make travel possible, convenient and comfortable (Figure 1.2).

While travel experience itself is important, it is even more crucial that a person is also willing to learn from travel experiences. When a positive opinion on a certain transport mode pre-exists, learning can take place and know-how is accumulated. However, *when there is already a negative attitude towards a transport mode, these attitudes are most likely to be confirmed and improvement of the aptitude not likely* (Flamm and Kaufmann 2006, 176).

*Figure 1.2* The relationships between well-being and mobility. Source: Authors, adapted from Ferreira et al. 2014, based on Vos et al. 2013.

We know that when users are given a hypothetical choice between a car and public transport travel for daily commuting, car travel is associated with a more satisfactory travel experience and general well-being (Vos et al. 2013, 428).

The picture changes when actual commuting experiences are evaluated. Research results in the United States and Europe show that commuting experiences in public transport – especially train travel – are evaluated more positively than car commuting. In the US case, while commuting, car commuters experienced more stress, anxiety, impatience and less enjoyment than commuters by public transportation (Abou Zeid 2009, 83–87). A study in different European cities revealed that train and metro commuters are more satisfied with the commuting experience than car commuters; however, in this study, bus commuters were the least satisfied (Duarte et al. 2010, 22–23). This means that car usage, e.g. for commuting, is reported positively, although the actual experience may be less satisfactory. It is also important to note the gender difference in gaining travel experience. Even if access to cars and possession of a driving licence is granted, women in partnerships tend to drive less because their male partners drive when they travel together (Ryan, Wretstrand, and Schmidt 2015, 112) or the male partner is the primary user of the vehicle in single-car households (Hjorthol 2008, 206). *Not having enough experience and perceived insecurity in traffic may be the reasons why women more often than men give up driving*; in addition, women stop driving earlier than men while still able to drive (Hjorthol 2013, 1197, 1205).

As stated earlier, riding public transportation also needs to be learned. Passengers in transit are exposed to "the everyday challenges of contemporary urban living and the thrown-togetherness of different bodies" that "can solidify prejudices and antagonisms as much as it can weaken them" (Wilson 2011, 646).

In order to be able to move across space in different modes of transport, knowledge of the area travelled and of the destination are both useful. The degree of spatial competence and familiarity depends on an individual's cognitive map that s/he draws in regard to the environment. "Cognitive mapping is the process of encoding, storing, and manipulating experienced and sensed information that can be spatially referenced […]. Parts of it are needed to solve problems, including decision-making and choice related to travel behaviour" (Golledge and Gärling 2004, 503). This knowledge is influenced by spatial thinking and reasoning; the scope and precision of these cognitive maps may be very different, thus "spatial representations in humans are incomplete and error prone" (Golledge and Gärling 2004, 506). Prior to the existence of navigation systems, spatial knowledge was essential for those using individual modes of transport or offering transport services to others. Famously, London cab drivers earlier had to pass an exam on their geographic understanding of the city to become a licensed cab driver. Apart from the knowledge gained in personal experiences, assistant tools were limited to maps and personal recommendations of others.

Spatial knowledge is essential for way-finding and successfully reaching destinations. It makes people aware of the time and cost involved. Beyond that, spatial cognition is relevant for the soft factors of travel experiences such as reliability, regularity and comfort. Kevin Lynch analysed how cities are experienced emotionally and thus differently from person to person: naturally, the personal and subjective evaluation of these experiences shapes access to a city's opportunities (Lynch 1960).

This becomes particularly important for perceived levels of safety in traffic and transport in different geographical areas. Incomplete spatial knowledge can lead to negative experiences in transport or can suppress travel needs overall. Kevin Lynch and others argue that it is actually not the knowledge about the cartographic, Euclid space that shapes preferences for movement, but the "sense of place" associated with meaning and characterised by heterogeneity (see e.g. Massey 1994). In Lynch's work, landmarks are such places that are fused with meaning and provide assistance to way- finding. In fact, in parts of the world where detailed, micro-level cartographic information is absent, way-finding instructions usually work via the indication of local landmarks. In navigation and ICT supported systems, such place-based measures are increasingly taken up in experiential and gamification approaches (see e.g. Meurer et al. 2018; Papangelis et al. 2017; Souza e Silva 2017).

The earlier issues can be translated to practical cases and demonstrated, for example, for pedestrians and cyclists. For cyclists and pedestrians, knowledge about the suitability of the cycling infrastructure and coherence of a bicycle network make an important difference in the decision for or against bicycle use. As the benefits of cycling on several levels are regaining attention, city administrations and advocacy groups are circulating more information on these aspects. However, much of the knowledge is acquired by personal experience. For cycling, personal safety is tantamount. Thus, knowledge about accident-prone areas and places is required to deal effectively with safety hazards. Manton et al. show that in this respect the perceived risks can overshadow the actual risks. A focus on perceived risks highlights how gender and cycling experience take effect on different preferences in bicycle usage and also barriers to bicycling for population groups such as the elderly (Manton et al. 2016, 19–20).

Considering the rise of hybrid transport regimes (neither public nor private such as car-pooling), it can be stated that being a *car driver* increases spatial knowledge more than being a *car passenger*. If needed at all, the responsibility for spatial knowledge is left to the driver. With current rising demand for ride-sharing services, spatial cognitive experience and thus opportunities to acquire knowledge are shrinking. It is likely that children's early socialisation with the car and parents' chauffeuring contribute to children not developing a sense of space at all. Interestingly, prior experience in long-distance travelling, e.g. for tourism purposes, together with exposure to cartographic material contributed positively to the spatial cognition of young children on the macro scale, exhibited by being able to draw a world map (Schmeinck and Thurston 2011, 10–13). In highly mobile societies, where high mobility is associated with status, such an early socialisation with the global scale may be an important element for the development of network capital (Frändberg 2009, 652–653, 663–665).

#### **Realised and unrealised mobility: virtual life and the impact on mobility**

In this final subchapter, we turn to "virtual mobilities" to illustrate the conjunction between mobility and immobility on the one hand and the gap between realised and unrealised mobility on the other hand. It will become clear that ICT has completely overthrown former certainties regarding needs, desires and motivations to move or not. However, it will also be shown that, even in times of ICT, motility – the potential to move – is dependent on access, personal aptitudes and skills regarding the use of ICT. Hence the proliferation of ICT in the sphere of mobility results in a complex picture that poses great potentials to alleviate mobility poverty and at the same time adds new challenges to the phenomenon.

Information and communications technology (ICT) has greatly changed contemporary life. ICT tools support the ease of movement through space and virtual mobility has been highlighted as a means to reduce and replace physical mobility. However, virtual proximity has only partially replaced the need for co-presence and the need for corporeal mobility. Face-to-face interaction is still important in the digital and virtual age as it fosters friendship, intimacy and trust: "As communication increases, social networks become dense and provide more and more necessity for face-to-face-meetings. Virtual activities stimulate real activities and interaction" (Kesselring and Vogl 2016, 148).

With recent developments of digitisation and augmentation of communication tools, the range of ways and modes to respond to personal needs has extended substantially. Social relations and networks, but also areas that touch people's basic needs are under deep transformation, most substantially the fields of work, education, health care, supply, access to public services and political participation.

Although these forms have not been taken up equally by all social groups in all geographic areas, there is no doubt that usage and coverage will further increase in the future. It is remarkable how ICT has changed mobility patterns (impacting both the concepts and the practice of transport poverty) and how the diffusion of digitisation in all aspects of life have led to the emergence of new mobility needs, but also raise new questions about individuals' ability to move (or stay).

#### 34 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

Research on the impact of ICT on travel behaviour has highlighted at least three effects of ICT on mobility: (i) *modification,* (ii) *substitution* and (iii) *enhancement* or *acceleration* (see e.g. Konrad and Wittowsky 2017, 2).

There is no clear and unambiguous picture on the question of whether virtual mobility generally reduces, maintains or increases physical mobility today and in the future. The three effects of ICT are not mutually exclusive; even on the individual level, it cannot be clearly assessed whether a person is moving more or less due to ICT (Mokhtarian, Salomon, and Handy 2006, 278). As regards the benefits of ICT, it is often generally argued that digital tools in combination with mobile communication technologies can increase activity while travelling and decrease resistance to physical movement. ICT usage allows us to make travel time productive or more attractive. This effect of ICT on mobility has been called the *modifying* dimension of ICT (Tully and Alfaraz 2017, 11). Using ICT and satellite navigation reduces not only travel times but also travel time uncertainties, discomfort and the need to plan in advance (Ben-Elia and Avineri 2015, 370; van Wee 2016, 10–11).

What is more important for the analysis of mobility poverty is that, for those familiar with these technologies, *the burden of physical movement can potentially be diminished and this familiarity may even alleviate some of the disadvantages that social groups experience while being mobile*. For example, this may be the case for physically impaired people: due to real-time and location- based information systems on barrier-free facilities, travel is becoming easier or is indeed made possible in the first place. However, for those with low digital aptitude, these technologies and services are out of reach. As usage is becoming more widespread and the norm, people with less digital aptitude face challenges. Many researchers argue that virtual mobility decreases the need for physical mobility, thus it *substitutes* travel. E- shopping, e-learning and teleworking can replace the need for physical presence and hence reduce travel. In social relationships, ICT tools such as messaging and internet telephony can create a sense of proximity between people who are physically divided and thus decrease the need for physical meetings and travel (Konrad and Wittowsky 2017, 2). The relationship between mobility and immobility is therefore recalibrated. A person's motility becomes more strongly associated with a person's ability to navigate ICT systems.

Besides access to ICTs, there is another aspect that needs to be highlighted: the growing need for co-presence despite increased telework. This need for co-presence can increase the burden of mobility.

Tele- and homeworking respond to individualised and complex arrangements and are likely to increase. There is a trend of entrepreneurial co-living in Europe, especially in Scandinavian countries, where entrepreneurs live, work and socialise under the same roof (Rogel 2013; Valva 2014); such living and working arrangements reduce the need for travel and require robust digital infrastructure and uninterrupted connectivity. On the other hand, in many respects, *virtual mobility produces more travel and thus accelerates or enhances mobility*. As already pointed out, social relations and networks can be maintained via a wide array of communication tools. However, in order to maintain and secure relationships, moments of co-presence are more important than ever.

Thus, with growing networks and distances, *the need for physical mobility to nurture these networks and fulfil social obligations is also increasing*. Elliott and Urry have highlighted the changing nature of tourist-type travel in this regard. Visiting friends and relatives involving middle and long-distance travelling has become a substantial part of leisure travel (Elliott and Urry 2010, 53–57). As touched upon earlier, despite growing ICT penetration, or precisely because of that, there is evidence that business travel is likely to increase and not decrease. A study in France showed that high trip frequency and demand in business travel above 80 km is no longer restricted to persons with a high income and work responsibility, such as executives, but also intermediary professionals (Aguiléra and Proulhac 2015, 34). This supports the observation that long-distance travel is increasingly becoming a prerequisite in contemporary employment and disadvantages those who are not able to conduct physical travel frequently. The aspect of mobility burden will be investigated more thoroughly in Chapter 2.

#### **References**

#### 36 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

Duarte, André, Camila Garcia, Grigoris Giannarakis, Susana Limão, Amalia Polydoropoulou, and Nikolaos Litinas. 2010. "New approaches in transportation planning: Happiness and transport economics." In *NETNOMICS: Economic Research and Electronic Networking* 11 (1): 5–32.

Elliott, Anthony, and John Urry. 2010. *Mobile Lives.* New York: Routledge.

#### 38 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

draw cognitive maps of the world." In *Scottish Geographical Journal* 123 (1): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00369220718737280.

### **2 Unequal mobilities, network capital and mobility justice**

*Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

#### **Abstract**

In this chapter, we continue our investigation of the gap between realised and unrealised mobility. After focusing on individual *mobility needs and preferences* in the previous chapter, we now turn to examining notions of *unequal mobilities* and *mobility justice* beyond the distribution of accessibility levels. Therefore, in this chapter, we try to understand mobility poverty from a systemic and structural perspective.

Two different approaches to unequal mobilities will be outlined here: first, the question of mobility justice will be discussed and, second, unequal mobilities in times of the networked society. This chapter concludes with final remarks on practical and policy implications.

#### **From transport justice and mobility justice**

Access to mobility options is highly uneven according to gender, race, class, income and age. While it is important to analyse how discriminatory practices explicitly prevent the mobility of individuals from different groups, it is also necessary to investigate the historical, spatial and cultural context of uneven mobilities. Discourses and policy debates often fail to analyse these structural aspects and therefore unintentionally overlook the mobility needs of different groups (Sheller 2015 for ethnic minorities; Uteng and Cresswell 2008 for gender aspects).

This is most evident regarding the needs of women because

when policy makers debate mobility systems, or designers implement new technologies, or researchers study new mobilities, they are unconsciously already working within a context of deeply gendered discourses that must be brought to the foreground if we are to understand how planning decisions may be contributing to unequal mobility outcomes for men and women.

(Sheller 2008, 258)

Questions of justice in mobility have been raised more thoroughly recently, most prominently by Sheller (2018) and Cook and Butz (2018). Recent debates on mobility justice are at least partially rooted in endeavours to develop a theory of transport justice and equity in transport provision. Therefore, the approach of transport justice will be briefly outlined here before discussing the contours of mobility justice theories.

In the transport justice debate, the most important criterion is equity in accessibility levels. Martens states: "[A] transportation system is fair if, and only if, it provides a sufficient level of accessibility to all under most circumstances" (Martens 2017, 151). From a theoretical standpoint, there are different approaches to "fairness" in transport that define what is a sufficient level of accessibility. These different approaches are variously helpful to understand transport injustice.

In an **egalitarian** approach to transport justice, the moral guiding principle is that everyone should obtain the same level of service and access. It considers fairness as a matter of relative distribution of benefits and burdens in transportation and focuses on inequality between social groups or geographical areas. Thus, the egalitarian approach asks why certain social groups or geographic spaces and regions have higher or lower accessibility levels, or more or less transport services than others (Pereira, Schwanen, and Banister 2017, 178).

A **sufficientarian** approach is more directly concerned with transport disadvantages and meeting the basic needs of social groups vulnerable to exclusion. The moral guiding principle "is not that everyone should have the same, but that each should have enough. If everyone had enough, it would be of no moral consequence whether one had more than others" (Frankfurt 1987, 21). Thus, a sufficiency approach in transport provision aims at the avoidance of misery that is experienced under certain thresholds. Accordingly, interventions in transport systems need to prioritise benefiting people below the threshold compared to benefiting people above the threshold (Martens, Di Ciommo, and Papanikolaou 2014, 7).

These two first approaches may be in conflict with each other due to their nature. Furthermore, it is difficult to apply a strict threshold of accessibility levels because the definition of what levels of individuals' activity participation is "reasonable" and "normal" is highly relational and socially, temporally and geographically context-specific.

Thus, a third, somewhat conciliating approach has been proposed, called **prioritarianism**. Here, the proponents' point of view is that benefits matter and that they matter more the worse off the person is to whom the benefits accrue. In this approach, the moral value of a benefit, or the disvalue of a burden, diminishes as its recipient becomes better off (Casal 2007). Regarding the priority of intervention, such an approach suggests a weighing of benefits that depends on the position of a person in the range of accessibility and service levels. In practical terms, this implies a ranking of population groups according to accessibility levels. The value of the accessibility benefits diminishes the higher a person's accessibility level already is (Martens, Di Ciommo, and Papanikolaou 2014, 8).

Fourthly, "Capability Approaches" to transport justice have been highlighted, based on the works by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. In the context of these Capability Approaches, the focus of transport policies should be on guaranteeing all individuals a minimum level of access to key activities that allow basic needs (commerce, education, healthcare, employment) to be met. It should not mean, however, guaranteeing that all people have access to the same transport conditions. This approach faces two challenges: first, the identification of the minimum acceptable thresholds of accessibility, dependent on a given society's values and history and requiring politically democratic, legitimate decisions; and, second, the fact that accessibility is the result of a combination of personal characteristics and social, economic and environmental specifications. The Capability Approach therefore needs accessibility to be addressed as an attribute of individuals (and personal characteristics such as gender, age, social class, disabilities, time and income) interacting with their environment. Many authors rather implicitly follow the Capability Approach, aiming at determining the minimum level of accessibility that a transport system must offer to each vulnerable segment of the population. Yet, not all authors follow this approach explicitly, leading to different interpretations as to how the transport system should evolve (Pereira, Schwanen, and Banister 2017, 178).

More recently, there has been a significant advance to highlight the limits of the transport justice debate. Proponents of mobility justice argue that the approach of transport justice is too limited to understand the full picture of mobility disadvantage. Sheller argues that "[i]ncreasing access to transport […] will not solve the problem if we ignore the underlying processes and relations that produce mobility injustice, and which tunnel beneath transport (into the body) and beyond the city (into the world)" (Sheller 2018, 15). She further argues that, in order to understand how the movement of people, resources and information are controlled and governed, mobility justice needs to be addressed at different scales. More concretely, this means that mobility should not only be viewed at the mesolevel in terms of everyday transportation, but also on the level of the body (micro- level) and transnational and global levels (macro-levels). Only when viewing unequal mobilities in conjunction with these scales is a theory of mobility justice comprehensive (Sheller 2018, 14). In terms of theoretical underpinnings, this means that a theory of mobility justice needs to pay explicit attention to discrimination and marginalisation along the lines of gender, class, race and caste. Such perspectives allow forms of privilege in, and exclusion from, deliberative processes that presuppose governance and control of movement, including everyday transport, to be identified. Such a theory furthermore includes spatial and "right to the city" perspectives (Sheller 2018, 22–32).

These perspectives follow the understanding that space cannot be containerised into different separated entities such as "cities" or "nations" or other forms of territories. Spaces are rather highly unequal and contested and therefore political, and the production of social space – in the sense of Henri Lefebvre – is a highly uneven process. With an approach that is sensitive to the historical, deeply entrenched injustices on the one hand and an understanding of the politics of space and scales on the other, an import step is taken towards envisioning actual freedom to be im/mobile.

Consequently, proponents of mobility justice do not only call for distributive justice; they argue that mobility justice can only be achieved when the power imbalances in access to information, participation and decision-making processes (deliberative and procedural justice), the recognition of historical injustice and oppressions (restorative justice) and a shift in hitherto practised forms of production of knowledge (epistemic justice) are addressed (Cook and Butz 2018, 5–19; Sheller 2018, 30–35).

For our approach to mobility poverty, as developed in this volume, the understanding of mobility justice is crucial. Only when the deeply engrained inequalities and injustices are taken into account can the gap between realised and unrealised mobility be identified. Only then do unarticulated needs, desires and motivations for mobility become uncovered and can be put to debate. Mobility injustice on all scales will be examined throughout this volume in a thorough examination of spatial aspects (Chapters 4–6) and social criteria (Chapters 7–12), both in theory and in the field (Chapters 13–18).

To open up the view even more, the next subchapter will provide further scrutiny of the political economy of differentiated mobilities.

#### **Unequal mobilities in the networked society and the burden of mobility**

The process of contemporary globalisation and economic competitiveness increase the complexity of mobility regimes, including their power relations. It is important to highlight the close ties between communication tools and mobility options because such an interplay allows more effective organisation of everyday life as well as social and business relationships. ICT drives further the extension and differentiation of social networks. It also allows schedules that are ever more complex and individualised living arrangements. Under such framing conditions, in the modern age, power relations in societies are increasingly building on the realised levels of communication and movement, the distinctive factor being the ability to "keep up" with technological innovation and social trends (Hannam, Sheller, and Urry 2006, 12; Shove 2002, 4). It has been argued that these developments further benefit those who already enjoy privileges, while those facing disadvantages may experience additional burdens (Elliott and Urry 2010, 59).

Furthermore, travelling has become a marker for status among young people, slowly replacing other status symbols such as the car (Canzler and Knie 2016, 61). Whenever new technologies emerge, the potential and opportunities to use these technologies change and those innovations may only be accessible to certain sections of the population because of high costs, the expert knowledge involved and so on (Cass, Shove, and Urry 2005, 542).

As outlined previously, the range of mobility options is further increasing day by day and so is the potential burden of mobility. In the transformation towards digital and automated societies, everyone's mobility arrangements are – in one way or another – influenced by the friction between entrenched norms and roles and the fast pace of contemporary life. While for many, negotiating these complexities has become part of everyday life, it can be argued that those who face a social or mobilityrelated disadvantage may be overly burdened by coping with the increased necessity of being mobile.

A key concept for understanding differentiated mobilities from a systemic perspective is the concept of "network capital" developed by John Urry. He and his colleagues argue that in the modern mobile society, above all other, it is movement and its related opportunities that have become associated with the understanding of a "good life". Social status, recognition and prestige are gained, maintained and enhanced by a person's degree of personal mobility and associated mobile lifestyles (Urry 2007).

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu´s works, it is argued that mobile lifestyles together with economic, social and cultural capital produce symbolic power that is the prime currency of social distinction and the mechanism for social stratification in contemporary life. Urry coined the term "network capital" to describe the elements needed to gain such power. He defines it as "the capacity to engender and sustain social relations with those people who are not necessarily proximate, which generates emotional, financial and practical benefit" (Elliott and Urry 2010, 59). For an in-depth understanding of mobility poverty, it is necessary to understand how network capital varies between social groups and how accumulation of such capital creates social inequalities.

The degree of network capital a person possesses depends on the degree of access to the following core elements and capabilities (Urry 2007):

As opportunities for travel and communication increase day by day, mobile lifestyles are not limited to the kinetic elites (Sheller 2018), but have become prevalent in the middle classes. Lifestyles of high mobility are increasingly perceived as the norm and not the exception in modern societies. High mobility or "hypermobility is glamorized, […] idealized and made desirable in the contemporary world" (Cohen and Gössling 2015, 1667).

Several authors have argued that social media contributes to the new role of long-distance travel, especially using aviation, as a generator of social status among young people. Social media enables a constant comparison of travel patterns, the estimation of personal "travelness" and thus contributes to identity formation and self-construction (Gössling 2017, 163–164; Gössling and Stavrinidi 2015, 736–743). Thus, such forms of travel enable the accumulation of social and network capital at an early age.

Furthermore, the need to sustain growing networks of family, friends and weak ties across larger distance requires regular physical meetings and hence increased travel (Larsen, Urry, and Axhausen 2006, 109–110). Thus, in mobile societies, individuals may experience a state of anxiety about "being disconnected by those moving around, […] being stuck in place, […] being too localist and not networked enough" (Elliott and Urry 2010, 47), and therefore being assigned a lower social status.

These examples show that it is important to understand both the inclusionary and exclusionary effects of social networks, the "Janus-faced capacities of social capital" (Schwanen et al. 2015, 132). Social ties are a capital as outlined by Pierre Bourdieu, i.e. a resource which can be accumulated. This represents a power relationship and a power resource. Social capital has an exchange value and is not detached from material resources (and other forms of capital such as cultural capital, Schwanen et al. 2015, 127–128). Indeed, maintaining social ties needs an investment of material resources.

The networked society is thus a society of inclusions and exclusions at the same time. Hence, due to the linkages between network capital, material resources and other forms of capital, it must be assumed that, in the present mobile societies, travel and communication options are highly accessible to the "travel rich", those who are usually also the better off and benefit them more than the travel poor.

Thus, social groups that face social or transport-related disadvantages may also face a higher burden to realise mobility that is needed for nurturing both basic (socially constructed) needs and their social networks. These perspectives have greatly influenced the transport and mobility disciplines in the last 20 years. Often, however, this approach is still a blind spot in transport policy and planning: we should keep in mind how it has become increasingly difficult to translate empirical findings into policy measures and technological solutions.

This demands an analysis of mobility needs that takes into account how social ties are maintained (or not) and the extent of the "mobility burden" for vulnerable groups needed for establishing social capital. Such analysis needs to consider how vulnerable groups rely more strongly than others on additional assistance in meeting their mobility needs. Apart from a state´s measures, this assistance is often support from family and friends.

From a policy perspective, it is argued that network capital should be enlarged and spread as equally as possible in order to lessen social exclusion. "A socially inclusive society would elaborate and extend the capabilities of co-presence to all its members. It would minimize 'coerced mobility', both to improve psychic health and to heighten equality". Transport policy and planning should therefore promote networking and people's freedom to meet each other and conduct relationships over larger distances (Elliott and Urry 2010, 64). Such perspectives stress that this is indeed necessary to increase mobility in addition to accessibility targets.

However, as authors point out, this social target is in conflict with environmental targets, as growing mobility for all presupposes huge and growing supplies of various resources and further drives global warming (Elliott and Urry 2010, ibid). Such an egalitarian demand is furthermore problematic because of an inherent paradox of contemporary mobility.

When networking and mobility are indeed marking social status, increasing the capabilities for movement may rather not create equality in society, but foster individual advancement and a competition for status that is by nature not egalitarian. Kaufmann concludes that "contemporary forms of mobility […] are as much a factor of inequality as of equality: they constitute a resource that is inequitably distributed within society, while fostering access to other resources inequitably distribute in space" (Kaufmann and Montulet 2008, 54).

#### **Final remarks: practical and policy implications**

As highlighted at the beginning of this chapter, much of the literature on transport justice focuses on accessibility and accessibility poverty. It is widely acknowledged that accessibility is necessary to expand people's freedom of choice and it promotes equality of opportunity regarding employment, health care, education and other basic needs and services. Thus, from the perspective of transport policy, the focus should be on improving access to places, activities and opportunities.

The sole focus on transport and accessibility, however, may overlook the unfulfilled mobility needs of less mobile social groups. The reason for such a blind eye is that accessibility approaches – whether egalitarian or sufficientarian – need to make assumptions either on the level of inequality that is acceptable in a fair society or on a minimum level of accessibility that should be available to everyone. In practice, however, both assumptions pose substantial difficulties. First, for an egalitarian approach, it is very difficult to judge the level of inequality that is acceptable in society and, consequently, many studies avoid making clear statements on this question (Pereira, Schwanen, and Banister 2017, 178).

Second, defining a minimum threshold for levels of accessibility is equally difficult; those trying to define such a threshold may fall into the trap of making generalised assumptions about people's needs, with the consequence that diverse preferences of vulnerable social groups may be overlooked (Preston and Rajé 2007, 159). Another weakness of approaches that only focus on transport is that improving accessibility is mostly viewed in the context of social exclusion. The above outlined challenge of defining adequate levels of accessibility is then exacerbated by weak definitions of what it means to be socially included or excluded.

With the transformation of social relationships due to recent advances in communication technology and mobility options, this challenge is further complicated. Cass et al. remind us of the changing conditions of contemporary life:

In […] an increasingly mobile world the challenge of accessing other people, places and services at some geographical distance is not something fixed and easily measurable. What is necessary for full 'social' inclusion varies as the means and modes of mobility change and as the potential for 'access' develops with the emergence of new technologies […]. These developments transform what is 'necessary' for full social inclusion. It is important but very difficult to acknowledge the temporal as well as the spatial dimensions of social exclusion, as these relate to the changing spatial and temporal organization of contemporary life.

(Cass, Shove, and Urry 2005, 542)

A practical example of the changing spatial and temporal organisation is the varying and flexible daily schedules of people. To coordinate different aspects of everyday life with the schedules of institutions and people is a demanding task. Only when the varying schedules of households and individuals can be brought in line with the arrangements of transport systems and the varying schedules of facilities and opportunities to be reached can people's (mobility) needs be adequately met.

This leads us to define a relational approach to accessibility in which policies of accessibility should be considered "relational" in their timing and geographies (Qviström 2015). Social networks are crucial for social identity and maintaining a meaningful life, and – in the form of social capital – for acquiring material benefits and social status (Schwanen et al. 2015, 127–128). As outlined above, for those depending on family, friends and other social informal ties as a life-support system (information on jobs, support in travelling), increased need for travel and communication can indeed be a burden. The dynamics of social networks are difficult to approach with accessibility perspectives, as they result in very specific and not generalisable mobility needs, which differ substantially from the basic "formal" needs of life.

To summarise, it can be stated that, in the contemporary world, which is characterised by an "infinity of promised or assumed opportunities arising from movement" (Elliott and Urry 2010, 8), accessibility is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for meeting people's diverse needs.

Due to the flexibility of space-time arrangements in everyday life and the transformation of social networks, any action against mobility poverty should also consider it crucial to relieve people from any additional and unnecessary burden related to their mobility. Transport regimes should be customer-friendly, easily accessible not just in terms of physical accessibility but also in term of skills and duties needed to use the service. Due to the increased complexity of transport-related activities, the coordination of transport activities should be kept at basic levels. This applies first to multimodal journeys, but it should not be limited to them. In order to enhance mobility, we state that we need to focus on people's capabilities to access desired destinations and possibly uncover hidden needs.

#### **References**

#### 48 *Tobias Kuttler and Massimo Moraglio*

Urry, John. 2007. *Mobilities*. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Uteng, Tanu P., and Tim Cresswell, eds. 2008. *Gendered Mobilities.* Aldershot: Ashgate.

## **3 The impact of life events on travel behaviour**

*Delphine Grandsart*

#### **Abstract**

In the context of dealing with mobility poverty, it is relevant to consider how personal choices and (changes in) one's personal situation affect behaviour and, possibly, lead to behavioural change. A growing number of studies have explored and confirmed the impact of life events on travel behaviour. As most travel behaviour is habitual, it is a challenge to encourage people to consider other transport modes. For policy makers and transport service providers, it follows that life events or transition points can – and should – be considered as opportunities for triggering behavioural change, i.e. for promoting alternative transport options and nudging people towards using them.

#### **Life events in travel behaviour change theory: an overview**

Personal choices and (changes in) one's personal situation affect behaviour and may trigger behavioural change. In this chapter, we analyse how behaviour and behavioural change insights can be applied to the study of travel behaviour and travel behaviour change. First, we address a more theoretical framework and then we offer some case studies.

We can start with Adjei and Behrens (Adjei et al. 2012). In their review and synthesis of travel behaviour theories and experiments, they distinguish between four types of theories, depending on which questions they seek to answer: