Incorporating the ‘cultural turn’

into geographies of mobility(Revamping transport geography)

Charles Rawding (Edge Hill University)

Traditional approaches to transport in school.

• Routes – (Routeway Pennines)

• Networks – (before / after the opening of the Humber Bridge)

• Modes of transport

More recent approaches• Problems and issues / environmental impacts• Congestion• By-passes• Integration• Carbon footprints / climate change• Transport landscapes• Transport infrastructure• BUT. These are seen as add-ons to people’s

lives rather than integral to their existence• AND. How do we relate these preoccupations to

alternative perceptions ?

Incorporating the cultural turn.

East bound carriageway

West bound carriageway

Image “Pre-motorway excitement 1930-1950s” removed for copyright reasons

Attitudes to motorways

• Early motorway glamour (1958 – c.1970)

• Motorway expansion and disillusionment (1970s)

• Motorway hostility (1980s on)

Change and the experience of children

Symbolic importance of roads

Transport and social class ?

Mobility… is an expression of modernity, of the way people in the West have come to understand social progress.Mobility … is an obsession for the modern geographical imagination … to build bigger… to move faster.

‘Today this is especially the case in the ‘majority world’, where urban growth and improved transport appear as the golden keys to development. People in the built-over, traffic-clogged, West are hardly in a position to object.’

Alastair Bonnett: What is geography ? Sage. London. 2008.p78

Mobility and modernity

• Personal mobilities are part of modernity

• What modes of transport have you used this week ?

• Why ?• How would your life be different if some of these

forms were not available ?

Mondeo man ?

The man on the Clapham omnibus ?(coined by a High Court judge in 1903 to describe the average citizen)

White van man ?

‘To hell in a hand cart’

‘The lived dimension of urbanism’(Stephenson 2003: p33)

• ‘One space, different uses and different meanings, all of which are framing a range of identities, including being markers of belonging.’ (Ibid: p41)

• Raban’s (1974) notion of a ‘soft city’.

Clare’s balcony

‘The lived dimension of urbanism’

• What would your world be like with no motor vehicles of any type ?

•What would your world be like with only public transport ?

• What would your world be like if you could have any car you chose ?

Mobility and modernity(children’s mobilities)

• Back of the car watching a video/ using a Gameboy ?

• Catching buses to the local town centre ?

• Wanting to learn to drive to achieve perceived freedoms ?

Personal perceptions of landscapes of mobility

• Pedestrianised

• Traffic-ridden

• Traffic organised (bus/rail/airport)

• How do you feel in such environments ?

• How would you like to modify such environments ?

Globalised perspectives ?

‘A Greek owned vessel, built in Korea, may be A Greek owned vessel, built in Korea, may be chartered to a Danish operator, who employs chartered to a Danish operator, who employs Philippine seafarers via a Cypriot crewing Philippine seafarers via a Cypriot crewing agent, is registered in Panama, insured in the agent, is registered in Panama, insured in the UK, and transports German-made cargo in the UK, and transports German-made cargo in the name of a Swiss freight forwarder from a Dutch name of a Swiss freight forwarder from a Dutch port to Argentina, through terminals that are port to Argentina, through terminals that are concessioned to port operators from Hong concessioned to port operators from Hong Kong and Australia.’Kong and Australia.’

(Kumar & Hoffmann cited in J-P Rodrigue & M.Browne ‘International maritime freight movements’ in R.Knowles, J.Shaw & I.Docherty (Eds) Transport Geographies : mobilities, flows and spaces.Blackwell, Oxford, 2008: 156.

Where next ?

• Virtual mobility

• Information and communication technologies

• email

• Video phones

• internet

• ‘e-tailing’