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One foot in the city, one foot in the village: the invisible mobility of urban workers in India

Matias Echanove, Rahul Srivastava

19/05/2020

The lockdown in India caused a humanitarian catastrophe that could have been avoided: several million people suddenly left the cities for the hinterland, sometimes without resources or means of transport. These workers and their families, who are often considered migrants, lead lives that are split between the city, where they can find work, and their village of origin, which is sometimes over a thousand kilometers away. Their mobility is invisible to statistics, and now is the time to…

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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The lockdown is revealing the limits of our lifestyles, pace of life and environments

Mobile Lives Forum

14/05/2020

While contemporary lifestyles are structured around the ability to travel often, quickly and far, the lockdown has introduced an unprecedented constraint that has temporarily interrupted the usual spatial and temporal deployment of our activities. While digital tools are serving an important role in making these measures bearable, they can’t compensate for this limitation of travel on their own. All dimensions of our lives have been disrupted: home life, social life, consumption, work, family…

Thematics : Lifestyles

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Video-communications, videoconferencing and the lockdown

Christian Licoppe

13/05/2020

Up until now, the use of video-communication was fairly marginal, but with the lockdown period, most of us seem to have adopted it with disconcerting ease. It seems however to be used as a poor substitute for physical face-to-face meetings that would otherwise be allowed by travel. So the question is: are these interactions enabled by digital tools, while different, somehow inferior to those allowed by travel? How could video-presence make us question our mobility practices and rethink the…

Thematics : Lifestyles

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On global counter-productivity. The critique of mobility and the coronavirus crisis

Alexandre Rigal

22/04/2020

At the beginning of April 2020, more than half the world's population was on lockdown. It has therefore become more necessary than ever to question the role of our global mobility system. In view of this, the critiques of mobility that arose in the 1970s provide safe guidance. They offer both an insight on a particular factor in the expansion of this epidemic that has now become a pandemic - the transportation system - and avenues to plan for our transportation system after the crisis.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Theories

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Covid-19: “The crisis allows us to radically reinvent our mobilities”  

Mobile Lives Forum

22/04/2020

Due to Covid-19, mobility has come to a standstill almost everywhere in the world. This historic moment presents an opportunity to collectively reconsider how we move around: how do we want to travel in the future? How can we adapt our mobility system to face the social and environmental challenges ahead? For the Mobile Lives Forum, one thing is certain: we shouldn’t just “go back to normal.”

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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Mobility: the lifeblood of modernity and the virus that threatens to undo it

Tim Cresswell

18/03/2020

In my 2006 book, *On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World*, I wrote that mobility was the lifeblood of mobility and the virus that threatens to undo it. The idea was further developed in reflections on the concept of turbulence in the text that follows, also written a few years ago, without knowing that it would resonate particularly today with the unprecedented situation that has arisen since the appearance of the coronavirus.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Theories

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Ecotourism: Is my flying saving the planet?

Javier Caletrío

10/03/2020

Tourism and wildlife conservation organisations promote ecotourism as a conservation, development and educational tool. Your holiday in exotic landscapes, they argue, could make the world a better place. But as the demand for ecotourism and its associated CO2 emissions grow, is flying to distant places compatible with the international commitment to avert 1.5 or more of global heating?

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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20 proposals addressed to the participants of the Citizens' Convention on Climate

Mobile Lives Forum

10/02/2020

The Citizens’ Convention for Climate is a French assembly consisting of 150 randomly selected citizens whose mission it is to formulate proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 % by 2030 in a spirit of social justice. The Steering and Strategic Foresight Committee of the Mobile Lives Forum sent members of the "Transport" group 20 proposals based on research projects that tackle the challenge of reducing travel-related emissions.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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A Proposal for a Post-automobile Future

Maurie Cohen

13/12/2019

It is becoming apparent that widespread diffusion of autonomous vehicles and other innovative mobility technologies is going to take longer than champions have promised. The current pause provides an opportunity to reassess options and consider alternatives that have been relegated to the sidelines by the recent rush to embrace smart-city visions unlikely to enhance capabilities for human flourishing in a carbon-constrained world. This article considers how we might envisage and create urban…

Thematics : Policies

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Let’s plan for the final days of cars

Agathe Lefoulon, Sylvie Landriève, Christophe Gay

18/09/2019

In France, cars represent almost 40 million driver’s licenses, and 80% of driven kilometers. They’re extremely popular, despite the many negative impacts on our lives that are sometimes dramatic and often irreversible. Illustrations © Les Infotographies

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies, Theories

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The spatial underpinnings of the revolutionary protests in Algiers

Ghaliya Djelloul, Aniss Mouad Mezoued

01/07/2019

Since February 22, 2019, when Algerians started to mobilize within the public space, the political scene has been taken over by weekly mass protests, described by the press as “tsunamis”, in the urban centers of the country’s large and smaller cities. Until now, the attention has been on the popular movement’s demands and successive gains, largely ignoring the spatial forms of the mobilization despite this being central to the current rebirth of civil society. Indeed, the daily fight to (re…

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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Mobility and disability

Javier Caletrío

18/06/2019

The daily experiences of mobility for the majority of disabled people still remain overlooked. What does it mean to move around in our cities when physical mobility is reduced? How can society be made more accessible for all?

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

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