1. Opinions

In the Opinions section, find socially and politically engaged articles that defend and reveal alternative approaches to mobility.

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

Alexandre Rigal

15 april 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.

Keywords : covid-19, epidemic, Illich, congestion, mobile system

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

Mobile Lives Forum

15 april 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.”

Keywords : lockdown, covid-19

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

Tim Cresswell

18 March 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.

Keywords : épidémie, mobilité globale, turbulence, système de mobilité

Ecotourism: Is my flying saving the planet?

Javier Caletrío

09/03/2020


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?

Keywords : Ecotourism;aviation;tourism;trip;transition;écology

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

Mobile Lives Forum’s Steering and Strategic Foresight Committee

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.

The self-driving car, a niche market or a true revolution?

By Christophe Gay and Sylvie Landriève, co-directors of Mobile Lives Forum

02/10/2018


The car is at the center of our mobility system. It has shaped cities and territories, imposing its infrastructures, norms, and speed. By monopolizing public spaces (roads, parking spaces, parking lots…), it has relegated other forms of transportation (walking, bicycling…) and practices (playing games, strolling…) to a small portion of the road. However, today, its negative effects are unanimously denounced (air pollution, emission of greenhouse gasses, accidents, traffic, noise ...), first and foremost by civil society. Public authorities, notably in cities, are also starting to take on these issues. In this context, what role will autonomous vehicles play?

The flying less movement

Javier Caletrío

First published March 2018. Updated May 2019.


Compared to the cacophony of disparate voices praising the virtues of driving less, cycling and walking, calls for rethinking our flying habits have until recently been few and far between. Yet the number of advocates of ‘flying less’ has been steadily growing for more than a decade. As their voices begin to echo further afield, they have turned what was until recently a rather niche debate into a movement reshaping the way we think of air travel. Who are these people and what is their message?

From Constructed Scarcity and Mobility Austerity towards Mobility Commons?

Vivre à l'ère de la transition mobilitaire

November 2016


We’ve got a lack of space in the city, we’ve got a lack of space on the road and we’ve got a lack of space… it’s a strange metaphor, but – a lack of space in the air…let’s say… CO2.

Sustainable mobility consultant, the Netherlands

 

Robert Smithson and the gold rush

Guillaume Logé

March 2016


It is alongside a highway under construction that we find Robert Smithson, whose work we analyzed in the previous post . Where does this long expanse of asphalt the construction equipment is unfurling actually lead? What does it tell us about the way we develop? What drives us to build it?

Robert Smithson’s Many Flights

Guillaume Logé

March 2016


The death of Robert Smithson in a plane crash in 1973, while flying over one of his works in progress, helped forge the mythical aura of this American artist who, at age 35, left behind a literary and artistic legacy that would deeply impact the art world. Smithson’s flight clearly refers to his last, tragic flight, but above all seems an appropriate way of describing both the general attitude of an artist whose thinking developed as a consequence of a life spent in perpetual motion, and the reflections he gained around the airplane, as we will outline in this post.

Braudel, a mobilities scholar avant la lettre?

Javier Caletrio

December 2015


Braudel has been cited but rarely used in mobilities literature, yet his work places movement at the heart of social, economic and political life.

What makes a slow tourist?

Javier Caletrio

November 2015


Slow tourism is gaining prominence as concern about climate change grows. Yet low carbon forms of tourism may be more widespread than is currently acknowledged.

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