Mobile Perspective Research Articles

Evaluation and prevention and control measures of urban public transport exposure risk under the influence of COVID-19-Taking Wuhan as an example.

BackgroundSince December 2019, COVID-19 began to spread throughout the world for nearly two years. During the epidemic, the travel intensity of most urban residents has dropped significantly, and they can only complete inflexible travel such as "home to designated hospital" and "home to supermarket" and some special commuting trips. While ensuring basic travel of residents under major public health emergency, there is also a problem of high risk of infection caused by exposure of the population to the public transport network. For the discipline of urban transport, how to use planning methods to promote public health and reduce the potential spread of diseases has become a common problem faced by the government, academia and industry.MethodBased on the mobility perspective of travel agents, the spatial analysis methods such as topological model of bus network structure, centrality model of public transport network and nuclear density analysis are used to obtain the exposure risk and spatial distribution characteristics of public transport from two aspects of bus stops and epidemic sites.ResultsThe overall spatial exposure risk of Wuhan city presents an obvious "multi center circle" structure at the level of bus stops. The high and relatively high risk stops are mainly transport hubs, shopping malls and other sites, accounting for 35.63%. The medium and low-risk stops are mainly the villages and communities outside the core areas of each administrative region, accounting for 64.37%. On the other hand, at the scale of epidemic sites, the coverage covers 4018 bus stops in Wuhan, accounting for 36.5% of all bus stops, and 169 bus lines, accounting for 39.9% of all routes. High risk epidemic sites are mainly concentrated in the core areas within the jurisdiction of Wuhan City, and in the direction of urban outer circle diffusion, they are mainly distributed in the low and medium risk epidemic sites. According to the difference of the risk level of public transport exposure, the hierarchical public transport control measures are formulated.DiscussionThis paper proposes differentiated prevention and control countermeasures according to the difference of risk levels, and provides theoretical basis and decision-making reference for urban traffic management departments in emergency management and formulation of prevention and control countermeasures.

Telework as a Game-Changer for Sustainability? Transitions in Work, Workplace and Socio-Spatial Arrangements

The COVID-19 pandemic makes home-based telework commonplace and promotes a discussion about addressing mobility problems. Many studies focus on the relationship between the urban form at the place of residence and mode of transport or travel distance. Less attention has been paid to the spatial location of the workplace and its implications for mobility. In this article, we investigate these shifting patterns of work (places) from a socio-spatial mobility perspective. Companies in suburban areas are often characterised by limited access to public transport, cause accordingly high commuting volumes of car traffic and have a strong impact on mobility systems throughout whole regions. Anchored in a case study in Burgwedel, in the suburban area of Hannover, Germany, we analyse the impact and the potential of telework concerning workplaces and sustainable mobility. The data analysis is based on qualitative interviews with local employers (n = 10) and a survey of employees in Burgwedel (n = 367) during October–December 2021. We identify three groups of employees according to their abilities to implement telework defined by the nature of their job and their company’s culture. We show that teleworking can be a game-changer for sustainable mobility in cooperation with local companies.

Anti-displacement mobilities and re-emplacements: alternative climate mobilities in Funafala

ABSTRACT If there is a dominant global imaginary of climate change in low-lying islands, it is of displacement risk. This paper uses a mobilities perspective to consider anticipated displacement as a contested concept, reporting on emerging anti-displacement mobilities and re-emplacements in a rural, low-lying islet of Tuvalu named Funafala. Anti-displacement mobilities are defined as processes in which ideas, people and/or matter become mobile in order to counter anticipated displacement materially or symbolically, while re-emplacements are the new ideas, people and/or matter which together constitute the remaking of place through anti-displacement mobilities. These hitherto relatively unexplored mobilities and place-making practices are pragmatic and political acts that resist climate displacement, through reclaiming and redefining territory that has been categorised as highly exposed to climate change impacts and potentially unliveable. Grassroots anti-displacement and re-emplacement are interpreted in internal population mobility to Funafala, where Indigenous culture is being revitalised by re-emplacing homes and livelihoods in a remote, rural area. Mobilities are a way to repossess and revitalise place, and reclaim the meaning of habitability in the face of climate risk. These anti-displacement mobilities and re-emplacements reject dominant climate mobility regimes and reaffirm Indigenous rights and identities.

Changes in everyday life of rural China: a perspective of mobilities

This article aims to examine how rural everyday life has changed in the Chinese context in response to the process of urbanisation. Drawing on a mobilities perspective, changes in everyday life are represented by spatial mobilities and the impacts of social mobilities on them are assessed at a household level. Employing rural survey data for 2007 and 2017 conducted in Jianghan Plain, China, results reveal that everyday life in central rural China has undergone an uneven development and is significantly impacted by social mobilities. As one of the main agricultural production regions in China, the livelihood strategies in the study area have been shifting from full-time farming to part-time farming and non-farm. The effects of the process of social mobilities on working, consuming and leisure mobilities are also unevenly distributed. Our findings suggest that the perspective of everyday life deserves further investigation for its important role in exploring the human–land relationship in a rural context. And the mobilities paradigm can provide an alternative insight into rural restructuring and its social effects.

Moving marketplaces: Understanding public space from a relational mobility perspective

Research on outdoor retail markets has focused on the diverse ways in which markets constitute public spaces where diversity and social inclusion coexist with conflict and reproduction of inequalities. This approach has prompted existing studies to focus on place-politics in terms of group- and spatially-bounded processes. In this paper, we take a relational mobility perspective to show that markets are not delineated and fixed entities. By approaching them as spaces in-flux, we are sensitive to the ways markets are continuously made and remade anew each operating day. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in four European countries (the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), we argue that 1) the practice of mobility is key to understand how markets come into being; and 2) a mobility approach opens up new questions regarding (unequal) power relations in the production of public space as it articulates the ‘relational politics of (im)mobilities’. Although the locality of markets tends to be emphasised as a sign of quality in governmental and public imaginations, we illustrate that the coming-into-being of markets depends on social, material and institutional relations coming from elsewhere.

Who is a Migrant? Abandoning the Nation-state Point of View in the Study of Migration

This article develops an alternative definition of a migrant that embraces the perspective of mobility. Starting from the observation that the term ‘migrant’ has become a stigmatizing label that problematizes the mobility or the residency of people designated as such, we investigate the implications of nation-state centered conceptions of migration which define migration as movement from nation-state A to nation-state B. By asking ‘Who is a migrant in Europe today?’ we show that nation-state centered understandings of migration rest on a deeply entrenched methodological nationalism and implicate three epistemological traps that continue to shape much of research on migration: first, the naturalization of the international nation-state order that results, secondly, in the ontologisation of ‘migrants’ as ready-available objects of research, while facilitating, thirdly, the framing of migration as a problem of government. To overcome these epistemological traps, we develop an alternative conception of migration that, inspired by the autonomy of migration approach, adopts the perspective of mobility while highlighting the constitutive role that nation-states’ bordering practices play in the enactment of some people as migrants. Importantly, this definition allows to turn the study of instances of migrantisation into an analytical lens for investigating transformations in border and citizenship regimes.

Tourism demand forecasting from the perspective of mobility: a brand-new predictive variable generated from intercity population mobility big data

ABSTRACT Few studies have investigated tourism demand forecasting from a mobility perspective. We explore whether population mobility data improve the ability to forecast tourist volumes in scenic spots. We selected Jiuzhaigou and Mount Siguniang in China as study cases and ensured the robustness of the results using single- and multistep rolling evaluation techniques. The findings reveal a significant correlation, long-term cointegration, and two-way Granger causality between intercity population flow and tourist flow. The comparison model with population flow as a variable outperforms the benchmark model. We prove the feasibility of leveraging population flow in tourism demand forecasting and suggest further research.

A Study of Identity Anxiety in When We Were Orphans from the Perspective of Spatial Mobility

When We Were Orphans, seemingly a detective novel, is a poignant psychological thriller. Owing to such reasons as immigrant background and special experiences when young, the protagonist Christopher Banks shows a sort of sophisticated emotion in his behavior and language, which is per se the anxiety towards his identity. The paper takes spatial mobility as the perspective to analyze the identity anxiety of Banks, endeavoring to dig out the underlying reasons causing the anxiety. After detailed analysis with the theories including imaginative travel, new mobilities paradigm, mobile lives and so on, we find that spatial mobility, vague cultural identity, special experiences and other factors cause the identity anxiety of the protagonist. Spatial mobility accommodates well with the feature of depiction of the memories in different times and spaces and hereby provides the possibility for detailed analysis of the identity anxiety, which is of some reference value for the study of migrant literature.

“Come On, Put Viber, We Can Drink Coffee Together”: Performing (Im)mobile Intimacy in Turbulent Times Among Aging Migrants

Abstract This paper critically examines how elderly people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse(CALD) backgrounds in Victoria, Australia use visual-based platforms in navigating the lockdown in Melbourne, Australia. Based on conducting remote interviews among 15 participants in 2020, the findings show digital practices as integral to forge and maintain cultural identities and social connectedness. Using the mobilities perspective to interrogate digital behaviours, I coin the term ‘(im)mobile intimacy’ to articulate a sense of closeness enabled, felt and negotiated through modes of movements and stasis in and with online platforms. I contend that differential mediated mobilities and immobilities are informed by social, contextual, and technological factors, revealing the textures of affective and relational dimensions of enacting mobile intimacy. In sum, by locating both movements and stasis in digital environments, this paper sheds light on the (re)production of exclusion during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Towards an understanding of mobility in social policy research

Over recent years, there has been increasing attention to migration in social policy research. Uniting this research has been a focus on cross-national migration, and predominantly immigration. In the meantime, the relationship between human mobility and social policy at other scales and sites has gained much less attention. This is in spite of the salience of multiple forms of mobility and measures for restricting, facilitating or promoting mobility not confined to the territorial borders of the nation-state. This article proposes an alternative mobility perspective for social policy research that moves us beyond the limitations of current migration approaches. To do so, we draw on interdisciplinary mobilities theory and research. Empirically, we apply a mobility perspective to examine how systems of social provision are shaped by and shape mobility and immobility, in restricting, facilitating or promoting the movement of people. We argue that such an approach allows us to frame and address questions that place mobility and immobility as central to the social relations of welfare, advancing our understanding of how social policies can reduce or reinforce the inequalities of mobility.

Mobilising therapeutic landscapes: Lifestyle migration of the Houniao and the spatio-temporal encounters with nature

This paper explores older people’s perceptions and imaginations of nature and the making of therapeutic landscapes during lifestyle migration. It explores therapeutic landscapes through three interrelated dimensions: in-person experiences, representations, and spatio-temporal dynamics. Specifically, it examines the seasonal migration of the Houniao (‘snowbirds’) from northern China to Sanya, a tropical city in Hainan province. The Houniao are mostly Chinese retirees traveling between the north and south across seasons in pursuit of healthy lifestyles. First, they reappreciate the healing power of nature through experiences of seasonal mobilities and health decline/improvement. Second, their therapeutic imaginations and representations of nature are shaped by medical science and more importantly by myths and magic, and are related to the meanings of lifestyle migration. Third, the Houniao (re)produce and mobilise the spatio-temporality of therapeutic landscapes and negotiate healthy lifestyles during regular movements and multi-site living. This paper highlights a mobilities perspective to understand the production of therapeutic landscapes and scrutinises the spatio-temporal dynamics and complexity of nature and its healing power in lifestyle migration.

Aggravated social segregation during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from crowdsourced mobility data in twelve most populated U.S. metropolitan areas.

The notion of social segregation refers to the degrees of separation between socially different population groups. Many studies have examined spatial and residential separations among different socioeconomic or racial populations. However, with the advancement of transportation and communication technologies, people's activities and social interactions are no longer limited to their residential areas. Therefore, there is a growing necessity to investigate social segregation from a mobility perspective by analyzing people's mobility patterns. Taking advantage of crowdsourced mobility data derived from 45 million mobile devices, we innovatively quantify social segregation for the twelve most populated U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). We analyze the mobility patterns between different communities within each MSA to assess their separations for two years. Meanwhile, we particularly explore the dynamics of social segregation impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The results demonstrate that New York and Washington D.C. are the most and least segregated MSA respectively among the twelve MSAs. Since the COVID-19 began, six of the twelve MSAs experienced a statistically significant increase in segregation. This study also shows that, within each MSA, the most and least vulnerable groups of communities are prone to interacting with their similar communities, indicating a higher degree of social segregation.

High-speed rail and urban innovation: based on the perspective of labor mobility

High-speed rail (HSR) can enhance the inter-regional flow of labor factors, which is conducive to promoting knowledge exchange and the formation of innovation. Using prefecture-level data and the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS), and adopting a difference-in-differences model, we explore the effect of HSR connection on urban innovation as well as its mechanisms. The results indicate that compared with non-HSR cities, the innovation in connected cities significantly improves after HSR connection. The results remain robust after using an instrumental variable to deal with the possible endogeneity problem caused by the non-random placement of the HSR routes. Further investigations on the mechanisms show that one reason for the innovation improvement in HSR cities is the flow of talents from non-HSR cities to connected ones. The other reason for this increase is that HSR reinforces the interaction of talents among cities along the HSR routes.

Teleworking during COVID-19 in the Netherlands: Understanding behaviour, attitudes, and future intentions of train travellers.

With the arrival of COVID-19 in the Netherlands in Spring 2020 and the start of the “intelligent lockdown”, daily life changed drastically. The working population was urged to telework as much as possible. However, not everyone had a suitable job for teleworking or liked teleworking. From a mobility perspective, teleworking was considered a suitable means to alleviate travel. Even after the pandemic it can (continue to) reduce pressure on the mobility system during peak hours, thereby improving efficiency and level of service of transport services. Additionally, this could reduce transport externalities, such as emissions and unsafety. The structural impact from teleworking offers opportunities, but also challenges for the planning and operations of public transport. The aim of this study is to better understand teleworking during and after COVID-19 among train travellers, to support operators and authorities in their policy making and design. We study the telework behaviour, attitude towards teleworking, and future intentions through a longitudinal data collection. By applying a latent class cluster analysis, we identified six types of teleworkers, varying in their frequency of teleworking, attitude towards teleworking, intentions to the future, socio-demographics and employer policy. In terms of willingness-to-telework in the future, we distinguish three groups: the high willingness-to-telework group (71%), the low willingness-to-telework group (16%), and the least-impacted self-employed (12%). Those with high willingness are expected to have lasting changes in their travel patterns, where especially public transport is impacted. For this group, policy is required to ensure when (which days) and where (geographical) telework takes place, such that public transport operators can better plan and operate their services. For those with low willingness, it is essential that the government provides tools to companies (especially in education and vital sector) such that they can be better prepared for teleworking (mostly during but also after the pandemic). Employers on the other hand need to better support their employees, such that they stay in contact with colleagues and their concentration and productivity can increase.

Using multi-layer nested network to optimise spatial structure of tourism development between urban and rural areas based on population mobility

Under the bidirectional flow pattern of urban and rural factors, the tourism industry has become an important way to promote the vitality of urban and rural areas because of rural gentrification and city migration. By constructing a ‘node-link-setting’ networked land use model, this paper maps the tourism flow and geographic space networks, proposes a multi-layer nested network theory with spatial relevance from the mobility perspective to solve practical problems, such as urban–rural dual opposition and functional segmentation. We studied the high-precision mobile smart phone signalling data combined geographical data of Yichang, analysed the dynamic change process and comprehensive development mode characteristics of tourism attractions in 92 villages and towns through the social network analysis, compared tourism flow network changes in Yichang over time to construct a tourism flow network of Yichang, analysed the level and location of tourism nodes in the network and classified the tourist destinations to reveal the spatial-temporal evolution process and change the rule of the tourism flow network. The differences were compared by constructing traffic geography and infrastructure networks. The purpose is to propose guidance countermeasures for regional village unit tourism facility construction and industrial development and to maintain the integrity of spatial correlation and structural optimisation.

Not in a Class of One’s Own: Social Origin Differentials in Applying to Gender-(A)Typical Fields of Study across the Educational Hierarchy

Abstract How and why does social origin matter for gender-segregated field of study choices? Analyses of gender-(a)typical educational interests have framed social origin differentials primarily through the lens of socialization, resting on the idea that children from socioeconomically advantaged families develop less gender-stereotypical interests via more egalitarian notions of gender roles. The social stratification literature, on the other hand, has discussed social gradients in field of study choice mainly from a perspective of social mobility and life chance risks, while remaining fairly detached from questions of gender segregation. Our aim in this article is to shed new light on how social inequality may be of consequence for gender-(a)typical interests in fields of study. Comparing register-based application patterns of a complete Finnish birth cohort (1989–1991) across three levels in the educational hierarchy, our results show that the same social origin may either lower or increase the probability of applying to gender-(a)typical fields, depending both on the educational level targeted and applicants’ gender. This context-dependency calls into question a strongly culturally framed interpretation of social origin gradients in gender-(a)typical interests. We conclude that social mobility prospects may align in a more nuanced and pragmatic way with gendered interests than previously suggested.

A degrowth approach to urban mobility options: just, desirable and practical options

ABSTRACT Following Illich’s (1974) notion of convivial tools and the distinction he makes between “self-propelled transit” and “motorized transport” of mobility, we apply the emerging paradigm of degrowth to urban mobility. Based on the degrowth literature and Illich’s work, we derive principles and criteria for the mobility of a degrowth society that include institutional, energy and material use, infrastructure, local environmental impacts, social impacts and justice, proximity and speed, and autonomy. To ground our analysis in real-world conditions, we consider the practical perspective of mobility and add another set of criteria: comfort and safety, travel time, monetary cost, and health. We then compare urban mobility options, including recently developed hybrid mobility and sharing schemes. Our results show that, although private means have an advantage in terms of personal practicality, they are not desirable from a degrowth perspective, due to their high social and environmental costs and as constituting a source of urban injustice. Public, hybrid, and self-propelled mobility options would become more practical if such injustices were recognised, and if effective public policies challenged the radical monopoly of cars. Further, hybrid options and sharing/pooling schemes have the potential to reduce the use of private means for metropolitan mobility. The adoption of this degrowth framework can enrich debates on sustainable urban mobility and moves beyond the common proposition of promoting public transport as the solution.

Feminist Friends of the Court: Amicus Curiae, Social Movement Institutional Activism, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Women’s Rights Cases

ABSTRACT To influence outcomes in U.S. women’s rights Supreme Court cases, feminist advocacy groups and their allies routinely file amicus curiae briefs, third-party briefs designed to persuade the justices in their decision-making. Yet no study has systematically examined the impact of these feminist-supporting amici on judicial decision-making. We argue that advocacy groups’ amicus mobilization can be understood as institutional activism, activism utilizing a judicial channel through which advocacy groups can communicate directly with the justices. To discern whether this form of feminist institutional activism shapes judicial law, we examine amicus activity in the women’s rights cases from the mid-1960s until 2016. We utilize a resource mobilization perspective to examine mobilization of amici but offer refinements of the theory by invoking affected-groups and information theories. Our regression analyses show that use of amici can persuade the justices to vote in favor of the feminist litigant. We also investigate whether the influence of feminist amicus activity is moderated by legal circumstances (for instance, whether a justice is conservative or liberal). We find only limited evidence that the potency of this form of institutional resource mobilization is moderated by the legal context.

Territory spatial security and planning strategies from the perspective of mobility

Territory spatial security and planning strategies from the perspective of mobility

Blockchain-based solutions for smart mobility sustainability assurance

Smart mobility represents the future for many of today’s cities and is part of the smart city concept. Besides all its characteristics, the smart city concept aims to use the IoT (Internet of Things) technology to improve the citizens quality of life through a secure and efficient administration of city resources. The exponential growth of population and urbanization creates many challenges, especially from a mobility perspective. The main challenge in this direction is to ensure a sustainable transportation system. The objective of this paper is to present a survey on the sustainability assurance for smart mobility systems by using the blockchain technology. Moreover, this study proposes a conceptual model for a sustainable smart mobility system that implies the usage of blockchain technology. Widely known through its connection with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, blockchain can serve the safety and security requirements that are specific to intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The main advantage of this technology is the capability to face against several security threats by storing securely the information. This approach will streamline and secure the sensors networks data handling by the TMCs (Traffic Monitoring Centers). The process of these data handling is challenging because of possible exposure to cyber-attacks that can lead for example to erroneous traffic lights phases and green-interval settings in crossroads. The conclusions will be issued based on a comparison with the current IoT approaches for ensuring the secure storage of traffic data retrieved from sensors networks.