Seeds for a Social Turn in Transport Studies. Socially Innovative Initiatives in the Face of Socio-Political Transport Labyrinths in Brussels and Beirut

This research investigates bottom-up initiatives of transport from Brussels and Beirut, which contest state-led transport planning processes and technologies. It conceptualises them as socially innovative practices, which have the potential to foster the seeds for a social turn in the field of transport studies. A social turn involves thinking about the scales and patterns of socially innovative initiatives, the meanings attached to them, and the various practices in their specific contexts. The research argues that these initiatives employ and embody strategies that go beyond more technical approaches to transport research and planning and take various social dynamics into account. The emergence of staged mobilities from below, the political, social, and/or mobile commons - as socially innovative actions - goes beyond the techno-managerial consensus to meet the unaddressed needs in transport planning and designs. All of this was thought of in relation to the ongoing socio-spatial institutional dynamics. As such, the research presents a theoretical framework that links social innovation to the rethinking of transport policy and practice of public transport infrastructure through a socio-intuitionalist approach. The research develops six case studies in detail, bringing original data from interviews, surveys, spatial mapping, and ethnographic methods. Three case studies focus on transport infrastructure that neglects diversity among users and creates and reproduces unfairness. Two empirical cases were examined in Brussels, the investment in public transport and the emergence of micromobility services under the umbrella of fair, diversified, and green transport. In Beirut, the research examines everyday sectarian politics that de-invested in public transport to infuse politico-sectarian differences in mobility practices. As such, these three cases opt to answer how the existing order produces social and spatial injustices in societies. The other three cases focus on different levels and types of socially innovative transport-related practices at a micro-scale, including fare evasion practices in Brussels, informal transport systems, and the emergence of the Bus Map Project (BMP) grassroots initiative as Riders' Rights (RR) in Beirut. These practices operate between public governmental authority (state) and economic resources (market). Their novel actions showed that transport instruments (including planning policies, regulatory frameworks, instructions, and design) do not fully address people's needs in transport, since mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion are always produced and reproduced among people.

Jaar van publicatie:2023

Toegankelijkheid:Open