Colin G. Pooley

Modal choice and modal change: the journey to work in Britain since 1890

The paper uses 1,834 individual life histories to examine changes in journey to work transport modes in Britain since 1890, and 90 in-depth interviews to investigate modal choice amongst commuters since the 1930s. There have been three main periods of change in the transport mode used for commuting, but there has also been considerable inertia in individual modal choice. The reasons why people use particular forms of transport have been quite stable over time, with some long-established differences between men and women. It is suggested that such trends have implications for the formulation of present-day transport policy.

Understanding the School Journey: Integrating Data on Travel and Environment

Travel to and from school is a regular part of life for most children. Such movement can also have important social, economic, and environmental implications, both for individuals and for wider society. This paper uses innovative methods to examine the complexity of the school journey, and to relate it to exposure to air pollution and engagement with the environment through which children pass. Some thirty lower secondary school pupils used mobile phone and global positioning system technology to record their routes to and from school in four study periods. They were asked to take photographs and write text messages relating to their route, and these data were then linked to modelled air pollution on the routes through which pupils travelled. Results demonstrate that for most children the journey to and from school is highly variable and contingent on other factors. Pupils who travelled independently (on foot, by bicycle, or by bus) were most likely to engage with their immediate environment, and small variations in route choice had significant effects on their cumulative exposure to air pollution. It is argued that the results shed new light on the everyday experience of the school journey, and have implications for health promotion and transport planning in towns.

Migration and mobility in Britain since the eighteenth century.

This book provides a new perspective on migration in [Great Britain] in the past examining in detail the life-time residential moves of over sixteen thousand people spanning the eighteenth nineteenth and twentieth centuries.... The migration experience [is] related both to other life-cycle events affecting families and individuals and also to broader social economic and cultural changes in the structure of society. [The book] discusses in detail the reasons why people moved and the ways in which migration was related to factors such as employment change housing aspirations family circumstances personal crises and external events such as war. (EXCERPT)

Talk, technologies and teenagers: understanding the school journey using a mixed-methods approach

This paper focuses on the methods used in a project which set out to capture the movements and to consider the wellbeing of 30 teenagers on their journeys to and from school. A mobile phone linked to a GPS receiver was used to automatically log travel patterns whilst the respondents added ‘blog’ images and text about how they felt on the journey. Follow up interviews further explored the data. The paper shows that by using a range of methods the young people became involved in the project in different ways providing a rich picture of contingent and complex school journeys.

The Impact of New Transport Technologies on Intraurban Mobility: A View from the Past

In this paper the authors reappraise the ways in which travellers in urban areas have interacted with new transport technologies and argue that mobility change over the past century or so may be less than is sometimes assumed. Attention is focused on changes in the journey to work over the 20th century, on the experience of new travel technologies by an adolescent female in the late 19th century, on perceptions of competing forms of urban transport in Manchester and Glasgow in the interwar period, and on changes in the everyday mobility of children aged 10–11 years since the 1940s. It is argued that, although the material experience of everyday transport has changed significantly over the past century with the advent of new transport technologies, these did not necessarily change the aspirations and decisions of people with regard to everyday mobility. Moreover, such changes did not always bring benefits to all travellers.

Housing strategies in Europe, 1880-1930.

Sweden, Thord Stromberg Denmark, Ole Hyldtoft England and Wales, Colin G. Pooley Scotland, Richard Rodger Ireland, Frederick Aalen The Netherlands, Niels Prak and Hugo Primus Belgium, Patricia Van den Eeckhout France, Michel Lescure Germany, Hans J. Teuteberg and Clemens Wischermann Portugal, Manuel C. Teixeira Greece, Lila Leontidou housing strategy in Europe, 1880-1930 - towards a comparative perspective, Colin G. Pooley.

COMMUTING, TRANSPORT AND URBAN FORM: MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW IN THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY

The paper explores the links between changing transport technology, individual mobility and urban form in the British cities of Manchester and Glasgow in the mid-twentieth century. The variability of individual commuting preferences is stressed, and it is argued that decisions about the provision of public transport rarely took into account the views of individual commuters. It is also suggested that factors governing modal choice have remained quite stable from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Residential differentiation in Victorian cities: a reassessment

The extent to which residential differentiation existed in mid-Victorian Liverpool and Leeds is reassessed in an attempt to reconcile conflicting interpretations of residential separation that have been put forward by various research workers. It is suggested that patterns of residential differentiation assume greater value when viewed in the context of their significance and meaning for Victorian society. Examples of the economic, environmental and social significance of residential differentiation are discussed as illustrations of the themes that may be explored: it is stressed that the impact of differentiation varied greatly over space and time, and that residential separation could assume different kinds of significance at various levels of Victorian society. Although comprehensive data sources may be difficult to obtain attempts to link the pattern and process of residential differentiation to its significance and meaning are likely to pay substantial dividends by furthering our understanding of Victorian urban society.

...everywhere she went I had to tag along beside her: Family, life course and everyday mobility in England since the 1940s.

Mobility is one of the most important constituents of everyday life, yet it is rarely studied historically and we know little of how it relates to changing family and life course constraints. Using data drawn from oral life histories, this article examines changes in everyday mobility over the past 60 years focusing both on changes over the life course and on the constraints imposed by family structures. We argue that, like residential migration, daily mobility has been closely related to the life course, with women especially affected by the constraints of motherhood and marriage. However, there is evidence that such constraints have changed over time, and that some older people today enjoy more mobility than they did at earlier life stages. We also argue that the independent mobility of children was closely related to the family structure in which they were situated, but that these constraints have changed much less over the past 60 years. The oral testimonies examined also highlight the variability of mobility experiences and the role of the individual in fashioning mobility behavior.

Multiple scales of time – space and lifecourse

All everyday activities require the negotiation of space and time: this has been a long-term interest within human geography, notably in this journal (Anderson, 1971; Carlstein et al, 1978; Goodchild and Janelle, 1984; Meentemeyer, 1989). From these straightforward beginnings, research in the discipline has increasingly sought to uncover the complexities inherent in what are, on the surface at least, unremarkable daily moments. Empirical and conceptual explorations are becoming more holistic in nature in order to understand individual behaviour in context: the social, cultural, economic, and political structures and norms that surround the deceptively mundane activities and practices that make up everyday life. Close examination of the detail of lives, constraints, opportunities, andöoftenöthe social and spatial inequalities involved, also raises questions around social and environmental justice and sustainability. In particular, the ways in which we effect time ^ space negotiations vary over the lifecourse in response to factors such as family and work responsibilities and personal health and capability. Today, much geographical research has focused on aspects of time ^ space coordination (eg Bailey et al, 2004; Couclelis, 2009; Kwan, 2004; May and Thrift, 2001) and everyday life [Holloway and Hubbard (2001) offer an overview]. Yet the ways in which different aspects of space, time, and lifecourse intersect in relation to the multiplicity of demands that are experienced everyday (in the spheres of work, home, family, school, and leisure) have attracted less attention. The three papers in this theme issue make these intersections explicit, through exploring time ^ space in particular settings and for specific populations. Each identifies considerations of time, space, and social difference that present a fundamental challenge to the areas of theory that they work with. They focus on issues of youth, health, and housing, and illuminate the embodied and experienced qualities of timeöas momentary, biographical, and transitional over the lifecourse. A particular contribution of the theme is that the papers bring different perspectives and issues of scale to bear on questions of time ^ space coordination. They explore alternative approaches, both in terms of scale of analysis (from capabilities of the body or movements and interactions relating to the home, street, city, region, or globe) and through close consideration of temporal experiences ranging from moments in daily routines to the transitions of the lifecourse itself. The papers are drawn from a much larger number of contributions to an ESRCfunded research seminar series on Time ^ Space and Life-Course.(1) Here scholars from a variety of disciplines, working in different cultural contexts and utilising a variety of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, debated the intersecting concepts of time ^ space and lifecourse, and applied them to the understanding (and possible solution) of social and spatial inequalities at a range of spatial scales. Each seminar included Guest editorial Environment and Planning A 2011, volume 43, pages 519 ^ 524