A1-Marzo2020

Zarainnova Mobility Lab

Building mobility through people

SensCities. Keys to understanding mobility in city life

I often like to reflect on the cities alive. What gives cities life? The people? The processes? The dynamics that underlie them? It can be some of the questions mentioned or all of them. What is abundantly clear to me is that cities today are increasingly multiverse scenarios in which a combination of logic and meaning develops. If we approach the life of cities from the perspective of the "Smart Cities", we can ask ourselves: what moves a city? How does your citizenship move? And this allows me to ask myself another question: what do we understand by mobility?

We live and live in societies with high levels of complexity and where the world grows in cities. According to projections of the UN (2019), by 2050, 70% of the population will live in the urban environment and before such a scenario of population concentration, the mobility has a lot to say; and be malleable and permeable.

Talk about mobility it is to glimpse a wide range of notions and perspectives. Think about mobility It could lead us, for example, to contemplate the postulates of article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes the right to free movement by proclaiming that “everyone has the right to move freely and to choose their residence in the territory of a State". Another notion is to consider the mobility such as the movement of people and goods that occurs in a physical environment, including travel through urban means of transport such as bus lines, subways, commuter trains, bicycles, scooters, shared devices, walking and use of the private vehicle. Another meaning of mobility refers to the actions of the public administration regarding transportation. And thus an endless number of connotations according to different lines of action, approaches and currents.

According to some scientific disciplines, the mobility It has been a centerpiece, for example, in the postulates of Urban Sociology and Critical Geography of the 1970s, both with a focus on socio-territorial inequality in transport. In the 1990s, with the concern placed on economic aspects of the state's neoliberal reforms, the term mobility little visited the field of transport and urban.

In the early 2000s, the mobility It is gradually installed as a paradigm linked to the advent of new technologies and the end of industrial society, in connection with changes in morphology and urban structure. In prospective terms, it is among the objectives of economic efficiency, social equity and environmental sustainability. In general, the literature shows a transition towards broader approaches with an emphasis on people, rather than on means of transportation; and there is even a change in the paradigm of thought, from transport to mobility (Miralles-Guasch, 2002).

Paraphrasing Guasch (2013), the mobility it is a way of having the right to the city. Therefore, the right to the city is also a right to mobility and this must be understood from the people and not from the devices.

Another interesting perspective on mobility it is the one that is extracted from the literature of Human Geography, which is inscribed in the context of the “narrowing of distances”. This approach includes the subjective vision of the territory, but focuses on the mobility of globalization in a generic way. The definition of mobility as a social practice of territorial displacement determines a field of knowledge that concerns the social practices of displacement of the daily mobility, of the residential mobility and of the professional mobility.

I often like to reflect on the mobility with life . What gives life to mobility ? People . The mobility It is a malleable notion, which is built through the practices and imaginary that are part of the development of cities and the meaning that each person gives it. Beyond the highly technical vision of "Smart Cities" and ultra-connected smart citizenship, the mobility It is “created” and has as many meanings as there are contexts and symbolic appropriations. The mobility The most efficient is that which is born from collective intelligence, which helps to generate meaningful channels and aims to respond to the needs of citizens .

References
Miralles G, C. (2013). Proximity dynamics in functional cities. Barcelona: Ariel.
Miralles G, C. (2002). City and transportation. The imperfect pairing. Barcelona: UAB.

Marianna Martínez Alfaro
Zarainnova Mobility Lab
March 12, 2020
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