Ole B. Jensen

Flows of Meaning, Cultures of Movements – Urban Mobility as Meaningful Everyday Life Practice

Contemporary cities and places are defined by mobility and flows as much as by their sedentary and fixed properties. In the words of Shane the city may be seen as configured by ‘enclaves’ (fixed and bounded sites) and ‘armatures’ (infrastructure channels and transit spaces). This paper takes point of departure in a critique of such a sedentary/nomad dichotomy aiming at a third position of ‘critical mobility thinking’. The theoretical underpinning of this position reaches across cultural theory, human geography and into sociology. It includes a notion of a relational understanding of place, a networked sense of power and a re‐configuring of the way identities and belonging is being conceptualised. This theoretical framing leads towards re‐conceptualising mobility and infrastructures as sites of (potential) meaningful interaction, pleasure, and cultural production. The outcome is a theoretical argument for the exploration of the potentials of armature spaces in order to point to the importance of ‘ordinary’ urban mobility in creating flows of meaning and cultures of movement.

Discourses of mobility and polycentric development: a contested view of European spatial planning

This article carries out an analysis of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), a policy document which represents a critical moment in the emergence of a new discourse of European spatial development. The analytical approach probes at the power relations which have shaped the ESDP framework and its contents, focusing on the twin core themes of spatial mobility and polycentricity. The analysis concludes that in the contested policy process a new spatial discourse of economic competitiveness is emerging at the expense of social and environmental interests. This new discourse will be further contested as implementation takes place in an uncertain policy environment.

'Facework', flow and the city : Simmel, Goffman, and mobility in the contemporary city

This paper contains a re‐reading of Simmel and Goffman with an eye to the mobility practices of the contemporary city. The paper offers a ‘new’ perspective on mobility in the contemporary city by re‐reading two sociological ‘classics’ as there is a need to conceptualise the everyday level of flow and mobility in the midst of an intellectual climate dominated by grand theories of networks and globalisation. In the re‐reading of Simmel and Goffman, the aim is to reach an understanding of how contemporary material mobility flows and symbolic orders and meanings are produced and re‐produced. You may argue that other academic disciplines such as anthropology and human geography have made important contributions to this understanding. What has not been done, however, is to show how these two sociological thinkers can move beyond mere application to this field of study. With their sociological sensitivity, they rather carry important insights that will benefit the sociology of mobility. Arguably Simmel and Goffman offer the opportunity to connect the global flows to the everyday level of social practice, as well as linking more basic/classic sociological theory to contemporary issues of mobility. The reason to ‘look back’ is therefore to capture some of the pasts ‘sociological imagination’ and relate it to an important social phenomenon of the present.

Travelling Ideas, Power and Place: The Cases of Urban Villages and Business Improvement Districts

Abstract A multitude of concepts and ideas have shaped practices in professions such as planning, urban design and urban management. Now, however, the speed and intensity with which these ideas travel seems historically unprecedented. This paper explores how some of these ideas are formed and circulated, often with unpredictable consequences. In order to understand the circulation and impact of these ideas this paper constructs an analytical framework which views these concepts within wider networks of social agents and institutions. Using insights from actor-network theory and discourse analysis we propose a framework that focuses our understanding of how ideas are translated into new spatial settings. The examples of the urban village and the business improvement district will be used to explicate the analytical framework. In concluding, the paper assesses the utility of the analytic framework in explaining the travel of planning ideas.

Negotiation in Motion: Unpacking a Geography of Mobility

This article argues for an understanding of public transit spaces as sites of multiple dynamic interactions. Much inspired by the approach of Erving Goffman, the article explore a “mobilized” understanding of some of his central concepts. The theoretical underpinning is the development of concepts related to interaction, mobility, and transit that focus on notions of the “mobile with,” “negotiation in motion,” “mobile sense making,” and “temporary congregations.” The theoretical approach aims at seeing public transit spaces as sites where cars, pedestrians, mopeds, and bikes on a regular basis “negotiate” not only routes in and across the space but also express dynamic flows of interaction in motion. The claim is that what seems like ordinary urban movement patterns are more than this. By moving in the city among buildings, objects, and people, one interacts with the “environment,” making sense of it and ultimately producing culture and identity. Empirically, Nytorv square in Aalborg, Denmark, is mapped and analyzed through recurrent field studies. The article aims at unpacking the geography of mobility at the site of Nytorv by applying the two perspectives of the “river” and the “ballet” to the mobile practices of the site.

Together and Apart: Affective Ambiences and Negotiation in Families’ Everyday Life and Mobility

Abstract This article addresses the affective, emotional, and familial dimensions of urban everyday mobility. Drawing on theoretical inspiration from phenomenology, non-representational theory, and mobilities research on the relational mobilities of children and families, the paper explores the everyday mobility of 11 households with children in the multi-modal context of Copenhagen, Denmark. Following the conceptualization of everyday mobility practices as heterogeneous ‘negotiation in motion’, the empirical analysis investigates how the strong relational dynamics between household members are organized around affect, care, familial bonding, and the rhythms of everyday life, which shape spatial patterns of moving together and apart. A new qualitative method combining GPS tracking, mapping, and household interviews is explored to show how everyday patterns of relational mobility are filtered through spatial affordances, affective ambience, and the temporalities of the lifecourse to influence transport alternatives of route and modal choices.

The Experience City: Planning of Hybrid Cultural Projects

This article takes its point of departure in the pressure of the experience economy on European cities—a pressure which in recent years has found its expression in a number of comprehensive transformations of the physical and architectural environments, and new eventscapes related to fun and cultural experience are emerging. The physical, cultural and democratic consequences of this development are discussed in the article, as well as the problems and the new opportunities in the “experience city”. It focuses on the design of the “Danish experience city” with a special emphasis on hybrid cultural projects and on performative urban spaces. “Hybrid cultural projects” are characterized by a conscious fusion between urban transformation and new knowledge centres, cultural institutions and experience environments. “Performative urban spaces” are characterized by stages for performance, learning and experience. The performative activity can take on the guise of events—something temporary, but still recurring, which influences the shape and identity of the space. The article contains four sections. In the first section, we present three European cases outside Denmark in order to relate to the wider international debate and development. In Section 2, we present the main theoretical concepts and framings that will guide the understanding and the analysis of the experience city. In Section 3, we focus on the design of the “Danish experience city” and present the first research findings. The projects are categorized according to their content, structure and urban localization. In particular, the cases are labelled in relation to their strategic and urban planning importance, their social and cultural content and their architectural representation and the programmes they contain. The article ends in a discussion of the trajectory for future research.

Controlling urban lighting by human motion patterns results from a full scale experiment

This paper presents a full-scale experiment investigating the use of human motion intensities as input for interactive illumination of a town square in the city of Aalborg in Denmark. As illuminators sixteen 3.5 meter high RGB LED lamps were used. The activity on the square was monitored by three thermal cameras and analysed by computer vision software from which motion intensity maps and peoples trajectories were estimated and used as input to control the interactive illumination. The paper introduces a 2-layered interactive light strategy addressing ambient and effect illumination criteria totally four light scenarios were designed and tested. The result shows that in general people immersed in the street lighting did not notice that the light changed according to their presence or actions, but people watching from the edge of the square noticed the interaction between the illumination and the immersed persons. The experiment also demonstrated that interactive can give significant power savings. In the current experiment there was a difference of 92% between the most and less energy consuming light scenario.

Of ‘other’ materialities: why (mobilities) design is central to the future of mobilities research

Abstract In this article, the notion of materialities is rearticulated as an important field for the future of mobilities research. We focus on the intersection between situational mobilities research and design/architecture. The vocabulary and material imaginary developed within the latter are an important source of inspiration for the future mobilities research interested in the pragmatic question: What makes this particular mobile situation possible? The argument is based on a critique of an abstract and universal notion of materiality or the material. Rather, it is argued, we should partly look at ‘other’ materialities (surfaces, voids, volumes, etc.). Moreover, we should also develop an ‘other’ way of looking at materialities. In other words, the article argues for a need for a view of ‘other’ materialities. The sensitivity to materials, spaces and sensations hereof developed within architecture and design intersects with research into situational mobilities design in two dimensions. Firstly, there are direct links to the ways in which designers and architects perceive, gestate and articulate their ideas about things, spaces and materialities. Secondly, the article draws on the recent thinking within the ‘new materiality’ literature in philosophy as well as in cultural theory. Important lessons are drawn in from across different positions such as non-representational theory, the non-human turn, Object-Oriented-Ontology to mention a few. It is argued that to create the necessary materially sensitive imaginary, mobilities research should be looking to architecture and design, as well as it may profit from engaging with these new materially sensitive thinkers. The article ends with some concrete themes for future research inspired by these intersections and identifies ‘material pragmatism’ as an underpinning set of assumptions for research into mobilities design.

Pilot Study of Person Robot Interaction in a Public Transit Space

This paper describes a study of the effect of a human interactive robot placed in an urban transit space. The underlying hypothesis is that it is possible to create interesting new living spaces and induce value in terms of experiences, information or economics, by putting socially interactive mobile agents into public urban transit area. To investigate the hypothesis, an experiment was carried out at a bus terminal serving both as a transit space and a shopping mall, where an autonomous robot were to detect and follow random people. The people that were followed were asked to fill out a questionnaire for quantitative analysis of the experiment. In addition video documentation of the experiment was used in the evaluation. The results showed that people were generally positive towards having mobile robots in this type of environment where shopping is combined with transit. However, it also showed harder than expected to start interaction with commuters due to their determination and speed towards their goal. Further it was demonstrated that it was possible to track and follow people, who were not beforehand informed on the experiment. The evaluation indicated, that the distance to initiate interaction was shorter than initially expected, but complies with the distance for normal human to human interaction.