Ending automobile dependence (periruban and rural mobility)

Contact : Anne Fuzier

Ending automobile dependence (periruban and rural mobility): the sharing and reanalysis of data

Mobility in peri-urban and rural areas raises social and environmental questions the Mobile Lives Forum explored at its 2013 International Conference “ Sustainable mobility in peri-urban areas, is it possible?” Since then, the quantity and diversity of research on mobility in peri-urban areas has only continued to grow. The French government has demonstrated their interest in this topic with recent institutional and legal evolutions, such as rural mobility development plans or the General Commission for Territorial Equality’s “Lab périurbain.”

The project End automobile dependence hypothesizes it is possible to gain a better understanding of daily mobility practices in sparsely populated areas by mutualizing, crossing and reanalysing data from different research projects conducted in these areas.

The research team, headed by Laurent Cailly and Marie Huygue, aims to reopen six studies lead by CITERES between 2009 and 2016. UPHA - Usage et Programmation de l’habitat ; Périvia - Le périurbain à l’épreuve des modèles d’habiter ; MOUR - Mobilité et Urbanisme Rural ; MOBITER - Mobilité et Dynamique des Territoires Ruraux ; Modalter - Territoire périurbain et organisation modale ; Les ménages, opérateurs d’une métropolisation qui ne dit pas son nom . While these studies have different objectives and protocols, they all use qualitative research methods and include interviews with residents of the Centre region who live in automobile dependent areas.

In France, where it is not yet a common practice to mutualize and circulate qualitative research data, this project examines methodological and technical questions as well as ethical and legal ones. The first phase of research will seek to define the requirements for mutualizing data sharing in the research team, and how they can expand it beyond the team. Which data should be made available? Which contextual elements should be specified to enable the reuse of data? What are the rights of participants and researchers who collected the data? How can these rights be protected? In particular, how can researchers preserve the anonymity of these studies without making the data unusable? Who should have access (academics, students, professionals, citizens…)? Under what conditions (free access, forms, signed contracts)?

In order to examine these questions, a conference will be organized on 11 October 2017. More information is available here.

This research will lay the groundwork for the conception and development of a digital platform providing access to a database with archived, processed and contextualized materials. Once the project is finished, the researchers will open this platform to individuals outside of the CITERES team.

The second part of the project will focus on reanalysing all project data, and concentrate on three themes:

• Mobility systems in sparsely populated areas. How much of these areas do residents access on a daily basis? What is their spatial layout? The timing of their commutes? The goal is to use these analyses to enrich the global understanding of lifestyles in peri-urban and rural areas. It will notably focus on comparing different residential contexts ranging from suburbs to isolated rural areas, and including intermediary peri-urban areas such as small secondary cities or more distant areas.

• The individual and collective experience of transportation. They will analyse mobility based on how people appropriate and use space-time in transportation. What is residents’ sensory relationship to transportation, to the landscapes they are travelling in? Which tactics and strategies do they put in place to appropriate the time they spend in transport? How does mobility influence the way they travel, their relationship to themselves, their relationships to others, the way they socialize? What are the different roles of information and communication technologies? Finally, what is unique to the peri-urban and rural transportation experience?

• The outlook for transitioning to a decreased dependence on personal vehicles. They will focus on three elements in particular, based on the contexts in which these practices take place: methods for learning new forms of transportation, the challenges and opportunities for changing transportation practices on an individual and collective level, and the temporality of these transformations.

The project results will be made available in Fall 2018.

Mobility

Broadly, the word mobility can be defined as the intention to move and the realization of this movement in geographical space, implying a social change.

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