Daily Spatial Mobilities

Physical and Virtual

Aharon Kellerman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317154983
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Öffentliche Raumordnung auf lokaler & regionaler Ebene

Discussing the concept of mobility at large and that of spatial mobilities in particular, this book makes the case for daily spatial mobilities as a distinct type of mobility and explores this concept from a variety of perspectives. Daily mobilities, such as for commuting, shopping, social ties, information, banking, news, studies, business meetings, etc. are typified by their being two-way mobilities, frequently performed, constituting a major element of our daily routine lives, and inclusive of both corporeal and/or virtual mobilities. Outlining his argument for daily spatial mobility, author Aharon Kellerman focuses on needs and triggers for daily mobilities, on levels of personal mobility and personal autonomy in daily mobilities and on potential mobilities leading to practiced ones. The concept is further explored using three major types of daily mobility, terrestrial, virtual and aerial and three major spatial elements; urban spatial reorganization in the information age, mobility terminals, namely bus, metro, and railway stations as well as airports, and global opportunities through daily mobilities, notably for users of the Internet.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315575780-1

This chapter will begin with a brief presentation of mobility at large as a contemporary field of study. It will then explore the two major branches of mobility studies, social and spatial, and the interrelationships between them. The chapter will then move to a focus on the specific class of daily spatial mobilities as compared to non-daily mobilities. Daily mobilities include, among others, mobilities for commuting, shopping, social ties, information, banking, news, studies, business meetings, etc. These mobilities are typified by their being two-way mobilities, frequently performed and constituting a major element of our daily, routine lives, inclusive of both corporeal and/or virtual mobilities. Non-daily mobilities, on the other hand, include the two-way mobility of pleasure tourism and the one-way mobilities of residential change and migration which normally involve social change. Next in this chapter will be elaborations on key concepts for the study of daily spatial mobilities. The chapter will conclude with a brief presentation of the chapters that follow.

Mobility

Human mobility in its most general and basic sense may be referred to as shifting, or the human ability to shift. Such shifts may refer, first, to the ability of the human body to move across space, or to the ability of humans to move their limbs. It may further relate to the ability of humans to move themselves using either ancient or contemporary mobility technologies. The shifting of humans over space always involves displacement, whether minor and repetitive as in daily commuting, or whether major and one-way one as in migration. These shifting abilities, which are mainly spatial, or ‘horizontal’ in nature, have been extended to various other senses, including social, or ‘vertical’, mobility, namely the shifting of people from one social level or occupation to another (see Oxford English Dictionary 2010, Cresswell 2006a: 20). Social shifting or mobility always implies change, whether in social position or in social status, as compared to displacement which constitutes the essence of spatial mobility, in which change may frequently emerge as cumulative, through numerous movements. Mobility is, thus, a multifaceted term. For human mind and action it was described as including:

From displacement from one location to another to the freedom of movement which is symbolically equated with social mobility, to the feelings of pleasure in effortless flight which has roots in infancy, to the fundamental psychic link of motion with causality and subjecthood first described by Aristotle. But mobility also suggests the opposite of subjecthood, the freely displaceable and substitutable part, machine or human, which enables mass production and a consequent standardization brought to the social as well as economic realm (Morse 1998: 112; see also Buliung 2011).

The study of mobility is not just interested in the shifts themselves, but no less in their contexts and significances. As such it goes beyond the traditional study of transportation geography (Shaw and Hesse 2010; Bissell et al. 2011). Any shift or mobility “is given or inscribed with meaning. Furthermore, the way it is given meaning is dependent upon the context in which it occurs and who decides upon the significance it is given” (Adey 2010: 36).

Social mobility

As we just mentioned, the term mobility has received a sociological connotation within the context of social mobility, referring to status transitions of individuals and social groups along societal strata. The study of social mobility is beyond the scope of this volume, but one may potentially argue that social and spatial mobilities are interrelated, in the sense that upward social mobility may imply extended and increased spatial mobility vis-à-vis an enhanced ability to purchase and use automobiles and telecommunications services. Also, one could assume an extended ability to use and benefit from these mobility technologies, notably the Internet, if elevated social status is accompanied by additional education. Such a relationship may potentially also go the other way around: increased physical and/or virtual spatial mobility may imply wider information and physical reach, thus providing stimulation and opportunity for social mobility. However, the mutual relationships between spatial and social mobilities are complex (Urry 2007: 8, Adey 2010: 37-8), bringing some to suggest that there is no connection anymore between the two mobility forms (Kaufmann 2002: 12-3, Bonss and Kesselring 2004), at least as far as physical mobility is concerned. For virtual mobility, via telecommunications, however, it was argued that “it is no longer geographical space that differentiates but virtual space”, and “the more telecommunications there is, the more social mobility” (Kaufmann 2002: 29).

Spatial mobility

The mobility of human beings, in the sense of humans moving over ‘horizontal’ space, rather than the more veteran notion of ‘vertical’ social mobility, has received growing attention in recent years, frequently blurring a clear distinction between ‘spatial mobility’ and ‘mobility’ at large. Spatial mobility has been viewed as a positive societal trend and force and as an integral part of the second modernity, involving wide social implications (see e.g. Urry 2000, 2007). Spatial mobility was variously defined as an activity or social dimension: “geographical displacement, i.e. the movement of entities from an origin to a destination along a specific trajectory that can be described in terms of space and time” (Kaufmann et al. 2004: 746). “Spatial mobility is not an interstice, or a neutral liaison time between a point of origin and a destination. It is a structuring dimension of social life and of social integration” (Kaufmann 2002: 103, see also Urry 2000, 2007). Also, “mobility is polysemic and does not itself reveal what underlies it” (Kaufmann 2002: 101-3). Thus, for Baudrillard (1966: 66) “effortless mobility entails a kind of pleasure that is unrealistic, a kind of suspension of existence, a kind of absence of responsibility”.

A basic definition for spatial mobility, from the perspective of transportation geography, views mobility as ability: “Mobility refers to the ability to move between different activity sites” (Hanson 1995: 4). By the same token, movement was described as “the idea of an act of displacement that allows objects, people, ideas – things – to get between locations” (Cresswell 2001a: 14). It is interesting to note that movement, or the mobile, was defined here through displacement which is a negative form of the term place, a term which traditionally describes the fixed or the sedentary rather than the mobile! This physical connotation for movement/mobility is typical within human geography, referring to the very human ability to move oneself in the sense of daily physical spatial mobility (see e.g. Ogden 2000, Urry 2004a). Others, notably sociologists, preferred to refer to mobility over space as spatial mobility (Kaufmann 2002). Bonss and Kesselring (2004: 5), on the other hand, provided a rather social and more restricted definition for mobility: “an actor’s competence to realize certain projects and plans while being ‘on the move’”.

Spatial mobility, stemming from ‘push and pull’ motivations, which we will discuss in the next chapter, constitutes foremost a constant, omnipresent “displacement of something across, over and through space” (Adey 2010: 13, see also Cresswell 2006a: 1-2, Morse 1998: 112). From the perspective of homo viator [mobile person] (Eyerman and Löfgren 1995), this displacement is practiced, experienced and embodied (Cresswell 2006a: 3). As such, spatial mobility is a meaningful condition, implying progress, freedom, opportunity and modernity (Cresswell 2006a: 1-2), as well as speed (Prato and Trivero 1985: 40, Virilio 1983: 45) and extensibility (Adams 1995, Kwan 2001).

The recent telecommunications/information revolution has loaded the term mobility with yet another meaning, namely the human ability to make a rather abstract entity, information, flow electronically. Such electronically-transmitted information may constitute a virtual extension of the self, through a phone call or an e-mail, or it may constitute more public pieces of information available through websites, and thus not transmitted as one-to-one or one-to-specific several receivers by an end-user. The mobility of information constitutes virtual spatial mobility. The mobility of information may be viewed as mobility for itself, or it may be defined in light of physical mobility. “Virtual mobility refers to the substitution of electronic transfers and exchanges for physical transport activities” (Janelle 2004: 86). Urry (1999) named the virtual information flows through the Internet weightless traveling, whereas imaginative traveling refers to such flows through television broadcasting. Though television broadcasts amount to one-way public transmission of predetermined information, they were compared to personal physical mobility via automobiles by Bachmair (1991) who claimed that “television succeeded because it broadened and extended lifestyles associated with the motor-car; primarily those concerned with mobility as a shaping principle of communication” (522). Others named mobility vis-à-vis television, as transport of the mind: “Television turns out to be related to the motor car and the aeroplane as a means of transport of the mind” (Rudolf Arnheim, quoted in Morse 1998: 99).

Displacement is possible for three sorts of movables: people, objects and information/knowledge (Urry 2007: 7-8, 47, Kaufmann 2002), and these three movables may be differentiated by their mobility flexibility using a state of matter metaphor (Kellerman 1993: 160). Moving information is as flexible as gas, easily changing modes, shapes and volume, and its transmission being instant. People’s corporeal mobility is like liquids, in people’s ability to change travel modes, and in their ability to be partially self-motored, though mobility usually requires some preparations. Moving objects is the moving of solids and is thus slower, always requiring handling for the very mobility of objects. All three movables are human in some way, since objects and information are sent by people and for people, sometimes replacing human corporeal mobility. The mobilities of people and information have become integrated, as communications permit the coordination and management of physical mobility. Furthermore, it has become possible for individuals to move corporeally while communicating virtually. Still, the mobilities of people and objects are also interrelated: “There are objects that enable people to travel across distance; there are objects that enable people to travel forming complex hybrids…there are objects and people that move together” (Urry 2007: 50). The mass moving of objects has become increasingly organized and controllable through logistics and modal transportation, side by side with the opposite trend for the daily mobilities of humans who prefer to move individually and, thus growingly possess personal mobility technologies.

As we have noted through its various definitions, spatial mobility, physical as well as virtual, constitutes a double phenomenon. On the one hand, it relates to the ability to cross certain distances within certain time units. By human nature this ability is performed physically through walking or running, and virtually by speaking or shouting. However, in its more contemporary context, this ability may be measured through access to, and availability of, transportation and communications means. Personal spatial mobility, as compared to public spatial mobility, may be measured by the rate of adoption of transportation and communications means by households. Side by side with spatial mobility constituting a human ability, spatial mobility also relates to the very use of technology-based mobility media, or the performed movements by actors. Three possible relations may potentially develop between physical and virtual personal mobility media, when virtual mobility media become available next to physical mobility: substitution (i.e. virtual mobility replacing any physical movements, such as performing banking actions through the Web instead of at the bank branch), complementarity (i.e. physical mobility is complemented by virtual ones, such as phone calls preparing for any physical movements), or additivity (a new movement is added through virtual mobility, such as information search through Google, or the use of mobile phone while driving or riding a car) (see Kellerman 2006a). In line with the fluidity metaphor, Urry (2000: 32; see also Shields 1997) pointed to the possible distinctions among mobilities by their rates of flow, their viscosity, depth, consistency, and degree of confinement.

Daily spatial mobilities

As mentioned already, spatial mobility includes both routine cyclical rides and walks, as well as long-distance (in space) and longer range (in time) human movements of migration, tourism (or travel), residential change, mobile resistance movements, and the wandering of youngsters, etc. (see e.g. Verstraete and Cresswell 2002, Kaufmann 2002: 35, 2004, Urry 2000: 145-7). Some of these longer range and non-daily mobilities might be two-way, notably tourism, whereas others are one-way, notably migrations. In a slightly different way, spatial mobilities may be divided into reversible (daily trips and travel), and irreversible (migration and residential change) (Kaufmann 2002: 24-6). Thus, Kaufmann (2002: 40) sees spatial mobility in a seemingly wider sense of purpose, consisting not only of travel and daily mobility, but of migration and res...