Sven Kesselring

Applied mobilities, transitions and opportunities

The mobilities paradigm has, during the last decade, proven its usefulness in investigating how the socio-material mobilities of modern societies have transformed fundamental aspects of social interaction, communication and exchange (Cresswell 2006; Hannam, Sheller, and Urry 2006; Sheller and Urry 2006; Adey et al. 2013; Sheller 2014; Sheller and Urry this issue). The multiple dimensions of contemporary mobilities have been investigated by scholars from many different disciplines and it has been shown to be an ambivalent and reflexive phenomenon (Kesselring 2008; Freudendal-Pedersen 2014). Mobilities have brought about positive economic and social effects, such as wealth, international cultures of collaboration and exchange. But at the same time, issues such as increasing inequalities, climate change, urban sprawl and highly mobile energy-consuming lifestyles have put questions of sustainability centre stage. Historically, mobility has contained the idea and promise of frictionless movement, freedom and speed (Leed 1991; Urry 2007; Rosa and Scheuerman 2009; Jensen and Freudendal-Pedersen 2012), as that which would lead to better lives. Instead, visions of “seamless mobility” and a “zero-friction society” (Hajer 1999) intensify risks of congestion, noise, urban degradation and environmental disasters (Urry 2011; Adey et al. 2013). The spatial and technological extension and speeding up of mobility systems has also led to intensified mobile forms of working, living and tourism (Hannam 2006; Kesselring 2006; Urry 2007; Beaverstock et al. 2009; FreudendalPedersen 2009). On the one hand, this has opened up hitherto unforeseen spaces of opportunity for new mobilities regimes for economies, transnational cultures, forms of intimacy and love, communication, communities and social networks (Mai and King 2009). New “cultures of immediacy” (Tomlinson 2004), dealing with distance and connectivity are emerging. But on the other hand, the possibilities of facilitating interaction from almost every place in the world have propelled a sort of “banal cosmopolitanization” (Beck 2008) that has quietly changed the social routines and the spaces for lived everyday life (see Freudendal-Pedersen this issue). For example, the boom of peer-to-peer online platforms such as HomeExchange, CouchSurfing and Airbnb have arguably led to alternative models of hospitality (Russo and Dominquez 2016) which have in turn transformed entire urban neighbourhoods in major cities such as London, Barcelona, Paris and New York. The large number of new social opportunities and choices involve various complex mobilities to make them work and then often lead into further mobilities to secure their continuation – second and third-order mobilities. Nevertheless, people and materials have to be put in place and ordered so that occurrences can be planned for and made happen. This involves proactive planning which is shaped by the memories and disturbances of past events, management and organization in the present; and also involves projections into the future. In short, various mobilities inform systems, infrastructures and technologies which enable other mobilities which lead on to further systems, infrastructures and technologies in an on-going process of formation, critique, development and dissension (see Birtchnell this issue). Mobilities and the acquisition of them have become a defining feature of contemporary life, bound up with our pursuit of new identities (Kesselring 2008; Freudendal-Pedersen 2009; Elliott and Urry 2010; Salazar 2010; Kellerman 2012; Cohen, Duncan, and Thulemark 2013; Milbourne and Kitchen 2014; Taipale 2014).

Corporate Mobilities Regimes. Mobility, Power and the Socio-geographical Structurations of Mobile Work

Abstract This article introduces the concept of mobility regimes and points out three discursive dimensions: the normalization, rationalization and time-space-compression of mobility. It concentrates on corporate mobility, business travel and mobile work, and gives a focused overview on current developments in research. Sociology has largely neglected the topic of spatial mobility. Dealings with distance and travel, however, are driving forces for the modernization of modern societies. Economic activity is based on mobility and companies deploy sophisticated mobility regimes to be present in markets. The increase in mobile work brings new issues centre stage such as the control of mobile workers, social cohesion and the spatial complexity of corporate activities. The author theorizes mobile work and business travel as signifiers for social change in the organization of work. He presents theoretical reflections based on empirical work conducted among mobile workers in the IT, mechanical and the chemical industries.

Planning in Motion. The New Politics of Mobility in Munich

Since more of twenty years Munich is a sort of laboratory for the new politics of mobility in Germany. The so-called Inzell Initiative has been founded in 1995 to solve conflicts and to enable collaborative planning in the major city in the south of Germany. The initiative is a powerful stakeholder network which has been influencing and shaping local mobility politics significantly. The article reconstructs the rise of the network and analyzes its current activities in planning and envisioning the future of mobility in one of the most powerful economic metropolitan region in Europe. By doing so the author critically asks if there has been progress in transgressing the ‘technocentric planning paradigm’ towards a mobilities paradigm that puts social cohesion in the centre of attention instead of technological feasibility. In fast it seems that the new politics of mobility leads to a re-strengthening of technocentric visions, not at least through the rise of the smart city and mobility discourse.

Mobilities, Futures & the City: repositioning discourses – changing perspectives – rethinking policies

Abstract The future of cities and regions will be strongly shaped by the mobilities of people, goods, modes of transport, waste and information. In many ways, the ‘why and ‘for what’ often get lost in discourses on planning and designing mobilities. The predominant planning paradigm still conceptualizes the future of cities and mobilities as a matter of rather more efficient technologies than of social cohesion, integration and connectivity. Sustainable mobility needs the mobilities of ideas and concepts and the reflexivity of policies. Communicative planning theory and the ‘argumentative turn’ have given significant attention to these shifts in societies’ discursive patterns and structures. For making up powerful and strong visions and policies for sustainable cities, ‘collaborative storytelling’ plays a key role. The theoretical outset for the research project ‘Mobilities, Futures & the City’, which grounds this article, was to explicitly provide an intersection for reflexivity, interdisciplinarity and exchange, to foster the creation of such stories.

Sharing mobilities. Some propaedeutic considerations

Abstract The sharing economy in general and the increasing number of sharing services in mobilities in particular stand, in many ways, for a phenomenon which is somehow bulky and unwieldy for classical economic theory. Within social sciences, these new practices of sharing rather than owning have been labelled in different ways highlighting distinctive characteristics of what sharing mobilities might mean for different people and networks. A common characteristic seems to be that sharing concepts are all highly ambivalent and often constitute a paradox between being part of the capitalist economy or providing an alternative to the capitalist economy. This special issue stands as an example of the many different approaches to sharing, with its point of departure being the twelfth Cosmobilities Network Conference in 2016 in Germany. The conference entitled “Sharing Mobilities. New Perspectives for Societies on the Move?” was a starting point for social-science-based debate on the future of new forms of mobilities. This special issue picks up some of the questions that were raised there and focuses on open questions with an outset in the mobilities turn. The authors critically investigate, think through and analyse a highly actual phenomenon, and discusses its urgency and relevance both socially and politically.

Mobility, Power and the Emerging New Mobilities Regimes

This paper presents various aspects of mobilities regimes. It shows that – from the body to the globe – modern life, economies and cultural activities are shaped and governed by powerful and influential sets of principles, norms and rules concerning physical, virtual and social mobility. Since the formulation of the “new mobilities paradigm” approach questions of power and governance become increasingly relevant in theory and empirical research. The author presents four analytical dimensions helping to understand the power structures in mobilities: the normalization of mobility is discussed as an overarching process which involves the rationalization, subjectification, and time-space compression of modern mobilities. The paper argues for a research agenda that critically investigates the micro-, meso and macro-scalar dimensions of mobilities regimes in order to provide the ground for new policies of sustainable mobility.