1st Edition
Sharing Mobilities Questioning Our Right to the City in the Collaborative Economy
This book examines contemporary urban sharing mobilities, such as shared and public forms of everyday urban mobility. Tracing the social and economic history of sharing mobilities and examining contemporary case studies of mobility sharing services, such as Car2go, BlaBlaCar, and Uber, the authors raise questions about what these changes mean for access to and engagement with the public spaces of transport in the city. Drawing on the thought of Lefebvre, the book considers how contemporary sharing mobilities are affecting people’s ‘right to the city’, with particular attention paid to the privatised, frictionless practices of movement through the city. In addition, the authors ask what has happened to earlier forms of shared mobility and illustrate how some of these practices continue successfully today. Considering the potential that modern incarnations of shared mobilities offer to urban citizens for engaging in meaningful shared mobilities that are not simply determined by the interfaces of technology and market forces, this book will appeal to sociologists and geographers with interests in mobility and urban studies.
Foreword by Juliet B. Schor; Acknowledegments; 1. Welcome to the age of sharing; 2. The successes and failures of shared urban mobility; 3. Sharing mobility, mobility justice, and the right to the city; 4. Regulation, platform governance, and the labour practices of shared urban mobility; 5. Empowering connections: relations, collaborations, and community in sharing mobility; 6. Conclusion
Biography
Davide Arcidiacono is a researcher in Economic Sociology at the University of Catania, Italy. His research focuses on the issues of digital transformation and the sharing and platform economy.
Mike Duggan is a teaching fellow in the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London, UK. His research focuses on the intersections between digital technologies and everyday cultures of practice.
"As stressed by the authors themselves, a sociological approach in the study of the sharing mobility is now necessary more than ever […]. While having a proactive approach to the topic, the authors demonstrate a high awareness of the limitations and challenges posed by the current sharing mobility as well as by the innovative solutions that they themselves propose/develop. This is an extensive work, reporting a rich case history for every aspect analyzed and referring to a large body of literature, in order to support their idea that changes are possible if based on a social and political attitude shift. A shift that puts mobility justice and relational thinking at its core. The author’s reflections recall the Agyeman et al. (2003) notion of just sustainabilities and invite the rethinking of urban shared mobility with this novel approach. They drive the reader into the discovery of the social and sociological dimensions of sharing mobility, offering insights, classifications and suggestions, that constitute an excellent starting point for further exploration." - Monica Bernardi, Participation and Conflict, The Open Journal of Sociopolitical Studies
