Geographies of new mobility services: The emergence of a premium mobility network space

Abstract

This paper offers a critical perspective on spatial supply structures of new mobility services using the example of carsharing, bikesharing and e-scootersharing. Following conceptual consideration of Splintering Urbanism, the emergence of a Premium Mobility Network Space (PMNS) is propounded; i.e. an exclusive supply of interconnected mobility services that is inscribed in the social and action spaces of the economically and culturally privileged elites of Western (post-industrial) societies by the marked-based mobility providers. Regarding this, we assume that the PMNS is effective intra- and interregionally at different spatial scales because the social and action spaces of the post-industrial elites are correspondingly organized intra- and inter-regionally. A (preliminary) comparative study of German cities over 300,000 inhabitants in this paper suggests that this PMNS mainly extends across the economic and cultural prosperous context of Global Cities. In this city network, the same few market players of Carsharing, Bikesharing, E-Scootersharing, etc. can be located over and over again; i.e. travelers between the cities experience a reduced transaction effort because they do not have to install new apps to use the certain services and find the same services in every global city. By contrast, the supply of new mobility services in other cities that are not part of the global city network – and this applies in particular to the economically weak old industrial cities affected by structural change – is poor to non-existent. In a second step, bivariate and multivariate analyses using Frankfurt/Main as a case study reveal that the socio-spatially exclusive supply of new mobility services continues in the economically and culturally prosperous areas within the global cities themselves. Methodically, the city comparison is based on an Internet and media analysis in order to identify the supply of new mobility services by cities. For the analyses in Frankfurt, certain supply structures were overlaid with official city district data. Overall, our findings point to a spatially selective supply pattern of new mobility services within economically and culturally prosperous spaces, suggesting an interconnected mobility network in the sense of a PMNS. By contrast, urban peripheries beyond the global city are bypassed, i.e., on the one hand, the social spaces of the marginalized underclass in the socio-spatial peripheries and, on the other hand, the dispersed suburban housing estates associated with a traditional middle class that remain oriented toward private automobility. In conclusion, these observations are of great importance because they contradict any sustainability ascriptions that are discursively produced around the supply of new mobility services. The suspicion arises that developing new mobility services under market-based developments only permits socio-spatially fragmented supply structures, but not the expected spatially ubiquitous solution that is needed for sustainable everyday mobilities.